Stan By Me

Stan by Me is a geriatric spin on a coming-of-age story about a grumpy, resentful character called Mervin. Despite the overzealous encouragement of Stan, his jolly neighbour, Mervin's aches and pains overshadow every possible joy in life.

Web: www.nightpiecemedia.co.uk XTwitter: @alcarretta @nightpiece

Since 2014, Nightpiece Film Festival has presented over 330+ short films from over 70 countries across the World. In the first year we presented 69 films on a first come, first serve basis. With the event proven we opened it out as free entry festival on FilmFreeway and were swamped with 2101 submissions in our 2nd season. In 2016, we were up to 2245 entries but practical considerations dictated and we introduced a submission fee to control numbers and raise production standards.

Entries dropped but short film quality increased and this has been the stability factor ever since; less is more. Never externally funded, sponsored or supported the event was originally designed to be able to be staged with content, a laptop, speakers and a projector screen. If it couldn’t be done that simply, it wouldn’t be done at all. Having never strayed from this simple ideal has meant the programme has kept running year on year. We survived the pandemic and in 2021 boasted our best year of attendance ever. In 2023 we hit the 10th year of the event; not bad for pure perseverance but there are some rocky moments running an event like this.

Through submission fees and tickets sales the festival usually generates enough cashflow to just about cover the core costs but Edinburgh is now simply the most expensive arts festival in the World to participate in. So, if you feature in Nightpiece as a filmmaker, remember, our low submission fee (discounted if a FilmFreeway Gold member or if we put out a reduction code) is pretty much the cheapest way to have the kudos of being showcased in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe!