AESTHETICA SHORT FILM FESTIVAL DISCOVER
YORK CITY CENTRE
5-9 NOVEMBER 2025
meet the creatives
The Aesthetica Film Festival is a BAFTA-Qualifying event held annually in York, now in its 15th year. It showcases a bold mix of flms, from shorts and features to documentaries and experimental works, alongside VR, interactive installation and industry events.
This year is bigger than ever, expanding to include Beyond the Frame at York Theatre Royal, encompassing live comedy with Sophie Duker, conversation with Mark Kermode and music from band, The Dodge Brothers. There’s also the New Music Stage, an all-day music festival showcasing 10 Breakthrough Acts, as well as the UNESCO EXPO, a showcase of creative industries in York and across the region.
The Aesthetica Fringe is a celebration of emerging talent in music, comedy, exhibitions, installations and performance. These are bold, artist-led events, part of a citywide cultural programme. This event is supported by Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Good Organisation. Together, we are championing opportunities for York’s creatives, whilst strengthening community wealth through the city’s visitor economy.
Please note, some of these events are ticketed. Visit asf.co.uk/fringe for more details and to book your place.
Enhance your experience by attending the Main Aesthetica Film Festival & Aesthetica Fringe. Book Your Pass: asf.co.uk/tickets
A Guide to Now for Those in the Future
5-9 November | York Explore
Pilot Theatre’s unique installation, A Guide to Now for Those in the Future, remixes interviews and footage into a vibrant explosion of sight and sound. Capturing the emotions, dreams and perspectives of young people, it acts as a digital time capsule, which refects life in 2025
Change of Phase
5-9 November | York Theatre Royal
Ice into water, liquid into solid, sound into light, noise into music, soundscapes into stories, digital into analogue. This show is a series of audio and light installations with performances, all set around a single, illuminated table. Sound provided by Wonkystuf and The Sounen Project.
Creative Ways
5-9 November | York Explor e
Creative Ways showcases powerful artworks inspired by York’s rich stained-glass heritage. Made by participants exploring creativity for both wellbeing and belonging, the exhibition celebrates connection, confdence and community and refects the transformative impact of art.
CROSSROADS
5-7 November | York Explore
A spooky, short immersive experience for teenagers and the young-at-heart by Erler and Pilot. On library lawn meet your mysterious guide by her trailer of truth. She’ll drive you to the place where dreams come true. Sign the contract, step inside, take the journey to the crossroads.
Kafka by Candlelight
5-7 November | House of Trembling Madness
Deep in the cavernous belly of The House Of Trembling Madness, Grifonage Theatre proudly presents Kafka By Candlelight. An uncanny and unsettling adaptation of some of Franz Kafka’s strangest short stories, disturbingly told in the darkness. Will you be able to stomach this?
Letterpress Film Night
5 November | York Centre for Print
Celebrate the days of silent flm and the unique beauty of letterpress printing. In this workshop, participants will work with an expert team to design and print title cards. The session will play with fragments of speech, action and plot to create a set of unique, traditional posters.
Letterpress Film Night
5 November | York Centre for Print
Letterpress flm night! Enjoy a flm screening and the chance to try your hand at letterpress printing. You will enjoy refreshments as well as a type-themed flm in the atmospheric surroundings of Thin Ice Press. Plus, you’ll have the chance to make your very own unique print.
The Inner Selves
5-8 November | The White Horse
This play is a view into a dying marriage. Henry and Nora represent the end of a marriage torn apart by the loss of their child, alcoholism and depression. They are joined by their Inner Selves (Henry’s Self and Nora’s Self) who torment them about what their lives could have been
Unwritten: The Literary Improv Show
5 November | Rise at Bluebird Bakery
Improv based on your literary suggestions. The Blufs take classic short-form improv games and infuse them with storytelling fair. Every show is completely unique, shaped by audience participation and spontaneous creativity. Who knows where this evening will take us.
York Fire Walk
5 & 9 November | York Minster
Blaze a trail and join the York Fire Walk to light the fuse of the city’s incendiary history. In this one hour stroll with York’s Hidden History, you will hear of fres in the Minster, Roman imperial funeral pyres, as well as volcanoes on Stonegate. Oh yes, and there’s some guy named Fawkes.
compulsive art light show
6-8 November | Fabrication, Stonegate
Compulsive Art is a projection light show in the heart of Stonegate, dynamically transforming Fabrication’s store window at intervals every night. Created by York-based experiential digital studio AY-PE, it fuses the artistry of Fabrication’s designers, with stunning creative media.
Rock Soil Scrape
6-8 November | 55 York Rd, YO24 4LN
An installation inspired by the earth’s sediments. It brings together interviews with local workers, video projections, as well as food and drink to connect us to our physical environment, cultural histories and deep time. Presented in what was a once a bakery, then bottle shop and bar.
sweet pea & the beech tree
6 November | Patch
Join Alice May for a script-in-hand performance of a new one-woman play and ofer feedback to help develop it for stage and screen. A comic tale of a granddaughter and her terminally ill grandmother, that asks what caring for someone facing death can teach us about living life.
City Folk & York Creatives
7 November | Patch
Drop into Patch for an all vinyl DJ set by Mat Lazenby and Jono. Meet local creatives. Grab a drink, chat ideas and fnd out how to get involved with City Folk magazine, a new publication made in the heart of the city. Plus, be in with a chance to win a print by illustrator Tony Allen.
Kids Just Wanna Fly
7 November | Patch
This show comprises an exhibition, a photobook launch and short performances. Leap into the unknown, through disposable cameras, polaroids and early iPhones. This is a tale of youthful ambition and the quest to craft an identity in the tumultuous years of young adulthood.
A Filthy Rant from Ancient Ulster
7 November | Amnesty Bookshop
In Iron Age Ulster, stories travelled from the mouths of bards into the ears of everyone else, with nothing written down. Earning four stars at the Edinburgh Fringe 2024, this show ofers a gnarly earful of ancient Ulsterwomen who used sex as a weapon – or, at least, so said the bards.
Transmute
7 November | Micklegate Social
A semi-generative particle system moves to an evocative mix of electronica, ambient, orchestral and techno sound. Immersive visuals and rich soundscapes merge, creating a mesmerising, cinematic experience that seamlessly blurs the boundaries between sight, sound and emotion.
Service Please
7 November | Rise at Bluebird Bakery
9 November | Micklegate Social
All Lara wanted was an easy job as she started to write her novel. But she is confronted with the sexist, stressful and chaotic reality of the service industry. This show returns after an impressive four-star run at the Edinburgh Fringe.
In Limbo
8 November | De Grey Rooms
Sophie is dead. Probably. She thinks. Maybe. How could the happiest time of her life turn to this? This a rehearsed reading of In Limbo, a play about the realities of early parenthood and postpartum depression. A feedback session will follow the performance to develop the show.
more
9 november | spark
More is a raw performance blending dance, visuals and music to explore the restless pulse of addiction – the craving for sensation, escape and wholeness. Through movement and image, it unravels cycles of desire and release. A sensory look at body’s longing to feel more.
Stories in Sound: Live Tales
9 november | patch
Join The Storytelling Ensemble for tales brought vividly to life with improvised music and original composition. Led by storyteller and composer Joe Allen, the ensemble breathes new life into fascinating fables and yearnful yarns, contributing to the magic of stories told aloud.
Bard
at
the Bar
tbc, visit website for details
Always fancied yourself taking to the stage to try out one of Shakespeare’s great soliloquies? Bard at the Bar is a raucous, no-holds-barred night of “karaoke” Shakespeare. This is your opportunity to grab a drink, take a script and climb onto the stage to perform your favourite scenes.