We’re thrilled to welcome the 4th MINT Chinese Film Festival (MINT CFF) to Brewery Arts from 6-8 March – a bold, boundary-crossing celebration of contemporary Chinese and Asian cinema.
As the UK’s first women-led Chinese film festival, MINT CFF champions cross-cultural dialogue and women’s representation on screen. Founded by Chinese film curator Yixiang Lin and Dr Carol Rennie, parliamentary researcher and former co-owner of Keswick Alhambra Cinema, the festival has become a vital platform for emerging and established filmmakers across Asia and its diaspora.
On Friday 6 March (1-3pm), drop into free creative craft workshops in Studio 1, including calligraphy for the Year of the Horse. Then on Saturday 7 March (2-3.30pm), Northern Dragons bring the vibrant spectacle of a traditional Lion Dance to Brewery Arts.
A Celebration of Contemporary Chinese & Asian Cinema
This year’s programme brings a curated selection of 35+ new films from China and across the Asian diaspora. Across the weekend, audiences can expect feature films, short film collections, gala screenings and filmmaker Q&As, alongside creative workshops, live music, DJ sets and outdoor activities.
The festival opens with a special double-bill themed Butterfly Veil – two landmark Chinese-language films drifting between desire, identity and history. Purple Butterfly is a sweeping espionage melodrama of love, betrayal and resistance set against the political turbulence of 1920s Shanghai. It is paired with the restored classic A Chinese Ghost Story, a genre-defining fantasy romance that transforms a traditional ghost tale into a haunting meditation on forbidden love and feminine desire.
Competition & Film Strands
The 2026 programme is shaped around several distinct strands: Asian Spark and C-Films in Focus. Both strands include Feature and Short Film categories – spotlighting stories from across Asia and its diaspora while celebrating outstanding Chinese cinema and strengthening connections between filmmakers and global audiences.
Running alongside is Cinephilia Encounters, a parallel strand exploring the transnational cultures of cinephilia. This year’s theme, Amorous Exile and the Gaze, centres on the European premiere of Films to Die For, presented with Tango Berlin and Riddles of the Sphinx in a special triple bill that moves across generations, geographies and cinematic traditions.
Co-founders Yixiang Lin and Carol Rennie share how the festival began – and why bringing it to Kendal feels so special:
“As a young Chinese film curator, while pursuing the MSc in Film, Exhibition and Curation at the University of Edinburgh in 2022, I first met Carol at Kendal Brewery Arts, where we initiated the idea of MINT CFF, given our shared love of Chinese culture and cinema – the first women-organised Chinese film festival in the UK.
I’m now excited to return, bringing MINT fans and diverse film lovers from across the UK to this beautiful Lake District town with a curated selection of over 35 films from China, across Asia, and around the world, delivered by our amazing all-women festival team in a new partnership with Brewery Arts!”
Yixiang Lin, Co-Founder & Lead Curator
“I’m so grateful to the wonderful team at Kendal Brewery Arts for hosting this fourth edition of our film festival. It’s a delight to introduce so many Chinese-speaking students from around the UK to the beauty of this part of the world, and to provide such interesting and novel content for local audiences in Kendal. I do hope people will dip into one or two of the huge range of films we have on offer, to take a little taste of what the world looks and feels like from the perspective of young Asian filmmakers.
The world is such a gloriously varied and complicated place, and it’s such a treat to see it through the eyes of people from different cultures than our own – especially when done as beautifully as it often is in film. In diversity we also find our shared humanity.”
Carol Rennie, Co-Founder
View all the films here.
