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The 2025 Doric Film Festival has drawn to a close, reaffirming the language’s place as an enduring pillar of local culture and underlining its role in the future of the film industry in the North east of Scotland.
This year’s event, which culminated in a showcase at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University, brought together an audience of filmmakers, Doric advocates and educators of all ages to enjoy a celebration of some of the Festival’s highlights over the years, all told through the voice of Doric.
The success of the 2025 Doric Film Festival underscores a growing appetite for regional language content, and a recognition of the cultural and economic value that Doric brings to creative industries. The place of Doric in the wider film industry was brought into sharp focus thanks to contributions from Matt Buchanan CEO of the Belmont Filmhouse, where the inaugural Doric Film Festival took place in 2019, and an update on plans to reopen the historic cinema.
The legacy of that initial event was further underlined by the presentation of one of a host of special awards to filmmaker Erin Smith who, after picking up an award in 2019, went on to create her own film and video production company, Pink Sphynx Media.
The contribution of school pupils to the Festival over the years was also acknowledged, including a performance by Big Noise Torry and the presence of Monymusk Primary School whose Doric book “Jock’s Daunder Roon Monymusk” took them all the way to meet the Prime Minister in London and won the school a coveted Scots Language Award. This year, the audience was treated to a live performance of the pupils’ latest song, and a screening of their latest film while Dr Jamie Fairbairn of Banff Academy updated the audience on Doric activity in education, including the forthcoming Doric Bootcamp in Portsoy next month.
The screening of an excerpt of “The Guttin’ Quines” – which was supported by The Doric Board – whetted the appetite for the film’s forthcoming tour with editor Duncan Forbes on hand to explain how the project was brought to life.
The Festival was also acknowledged as an important platform for capturing and sharing social history, language and heritage when Seamus and Anne Logan introduced a previous Doric Film Festival winning production featuring Anne’s late mother, Margaret Scott, sharing her memories of the fishing community in Broadsea.
The acclaimed Doric Film Festival, which is supported by the Scottish Government, is the brainchild of award-winning Scots Radio Director Frieda Morrison who created the platform to celebrate the Doric language and its cultural identity. She said: “From poignant memories of years gone by to laugh-out-loud comedies, this year’s Festival once again demonstrated that Doric is not only a cherished inheritance but also a living, evolving force in contemporary storytelling and filmmaking.
“Doric isn’t just a relic of the past; it’s a vibrant, expressive tool for the future: the films we showcased showed us that the North east has stories the world wants to hear, and Doric is how we can tell them.”
To find out more about The Doric Film Festival, visit: www.doricfilmfestival.com
-For further information contact Frieda Morrison of Scots Radio on 07789 692836.
-Scots Radio was established in 2013, releasing monthly one-hour episodes and regular quality video content. It has been nominated five times for an ‘excellence’ award at the Celtic Media Festival and was named as a winner in 2021. www.scotsradio.com
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