Odyssey is a UK-based international film festival built around ideas.
Each year, we choose one theme as a starting point for filmmakers and audiences to explore cinema from different cultures, disciplines and perspectives. Rather than defining what belongs within that theme, we invite filmmakers and audiences to interpret it freely, opening conversations that can travel beyond the films themselves.
Rooted in cultural exchange between the UK, Greater China and beyond, Odyssey brings together screenings, conversations, new talent, industry exchange and year-round recommendations. Hong Kong and Chinese cinema remain an important part of our DNA, but not the boundary of our programme. Instead, they become starting points for conversations with filmmakers, cultures and ideas from around the world.
Since its establishment, Odyssey has explored a different idea each year — from #GlobalSustainability and #FoodAndTravel, to #Sports and, in 2026, #Fashion. Through these changing themes, we are interested in how cinema can help us look again at subjects that already surround our everyday lives.
Odyssey is therefore not simply about the films we screen. We see a film festival as a space for ideas, encounters and unexpected connections, between filmmakers and audiences, between established voices and new talent, between different creative disciplines, and between people who might otherwise never meet.
At a time when the world can often feel increasingly divided, we believe culture still has an important ability to create spaces for curiosity and dialogue.
About the Presenter
UK-China Film Collab is a unique and rising non-profit organisation for the research and practice of modern film diplomacy.
