WOW Festival closes with record figures
The 2021 WOW film festival celebrated its 20th birthday in grand style this month, closing last weekend with record ticket sales.
Its director says the success of its new online format will inform future editions of the festival.
The festival curated 27 films and 15 talks and events with guests from around the world.
In addition, its innovative “pay what you feel” donations scheme brought in nearly £10,000 from 1,000 people.
For the 2021 festival, 10,479 tickets were taken up from 2,354 attendees, with 12 films being sold out. In comparison the festival sold 2,333 tickets in 2019.
“That’s a fourfold increase in tickets and if each ticket represents two people on a sofa, then that’s nine times more people watching the films,” says festival spokesperson Alan Hewson.
WOW collaborated with three other Wales-based festivals. Abertoir presented five films plus talks, including the hit Welsh comedy-thriller The Toll, which sold out.
Iris Wales’ LGBT+ Film Festival presented a best of selection of shorts from their 2020 programme and Kotatsu Japanese Animation Festival presented a selection of short films and an animation workshop.
“It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster these last few months, not knowing if the festival would go ahead and then the gamble of going online,” says Hewson.
“But it’s been a huge success in terms of audience numbers, feedback and the very generous response in donations.
“We had talked about putting part of the festival online for a number of years, but events this year made us take the step into the unknown and thank goodness we did.
“It’s good to see something positive come out of all the uncertainty for the future of the arts over the last year.
“The success of the 2021 festival is a new model for us to build on for future WOW festivals.
“It also offers a message of hope, not only for WOW but for all the arts in Wales and the UK, to be bold and embrace the online as well as welcoming audiences back when they finally return to the cinemas.”
■■All the festival talks and events are still available to watch online via eventive at www.watch.eventive.org/ wow2021