Every good club has its rituals, and one of the oldest is the night when a room full of members gathers to applaud someone who did things differently. The Eccentric Club has been doing so for as long as any member can remember, and more often than not the person being applauded has been a performer. This autumn it lends its name and its enthusiasm to an occasion very much in that tradition: the Soho Film Awards, whose motto, The Spirit of Independent Cinema, could almost have been written for our own members.
Independent film is, after all, the eccentric's art form. It is made on small budgets and large convictions, by those who would rather tell the story they believe in than the one a studio would prefer. Among this year's winners are a Welsh pioneer of virtual production, a Texan who founded a collective called Let's Make A Bad Movie Productions, and a Greek writer-director who works as a dentist by day and makes surreal films by night. One suspects several of them would be very much at home in our company.
What struck us most about this year's festival, though, was the sheer number of films that refused to behave. Alongside the thrillers and dramas, the submissions were rich in arthouse, experimental and frankly eccentric work: surreal shorts, dark comedies, psychological horror, philosophical fables and films that defy any category at all. The awards reflect it. There are dedicated honours for the Best Indie / Alternative / Arthouse Feature and the Best Short Indie / Alternative / Art House Film, and the winners range from a Southern noir that unfolds over a single dinner to a meditation on insomnia that may or may not send its audience to sleep. In an age of franchise sequels and algorithm-friendly content, it is heartening to find so many filmmakers still determined to be odd, and so much the better for it.
The winners
The top prize, Best Feature Film, goes to Last Supper (USA, 2026) by Sonny Corona III, a Southern noir tragedy in which a grieving father's quest for vengeance becomes a long reckoning over dinner, in a kitchen where the sauce has simmered for six hours.
Best Short Film is awarded to Something Pointless (UK, 2026) by Asa Bailey — a title any Eccentric would admire. It tells a story of a bullied boy who befriends an elderly man covering a forgotten brick wall with painted eggshells, on the principle that one utterly pointless act a day restores the purpose of a life. The cast includes the BAFTA winner Owen Teale and the Olivier Award winner Sophie Thompson.
The other honours are:
- Best Indie / Alternative / Arthouse Feature: Beyond Mamushi (UK, 2025), Martin Daniels
- Best Comedy Feature: Rest In Peace, If You Can (France, 2025), Charly Ongolo and Michel Nogara
- Best Leading Actor / Actress: Yekaterina Molostova, Bye-Bye, Sing Sing (USA, 2026), Peter Valentino
- Best Short Drama: Empathy Rehearsals (Italy, 2026), Jacopo Cullin
- Best Short Thriller: Drop Number 8 (USA, 2025), Ryan and Chad Chamberlain
- Best Short Romance: We Are Where We Are (UK, 2026), Clara Planelles
- Best Short Sci-Fi / Fantasy: Dead to Door (UK, 2026), Kate Lloyd
- Best Short Indie / Alternative / Art House Film: This Will Make You Sleep Instantly (Greece, Romania, UK, 2025), Michalis Langas
- Best Short Film Screenplay: The Race (Ireland, 2026), Edelle Kenny
- Best Short Film Cinematography: A Girl Called Alice (UK, 2026), Tristan Loraine
The opening night
The festival opens on the evening of Friday 16 October at The Savile Club on Brook Street — one of London's most beautiful clubhouses, and a setting our members know only too well. Guests, filmmakers and the jury gather from the early evening, and at 6pm the programme begins with an opening address, Why We Need This Film Festival, by the festival organiser, Ima von Wenden of Cinelion UK, who is also, of course, the Eccentric Club's own Secretary. A curated programme of short films follows, culminating in the presentation of the awards, with private screenings of the feature films on later dates.
A number of award-winning actors and legends of British cinema are expected to attend, which promises the kind of company that makes a night at a club memorable long after the last glass is emptied.
Why we are partners
Members hardly need reminding of the Club's history, but it is worth recalling how closely it has been bound up from the start with the acting profession. When Jack Harrison, a theatrical costumier from Covent Garden, revived the Club in the 1890s, he filled it with the actors, artists and showmen of his day, and the roll of members that followed reads like a playbill of the late Victorian and Edwardian stage: Sir Charles Wyndham, Sir Herbert Tree, Sir George Alexander, Sir Gerald du Maurier, Sir Seymour Hicks, Henry Ainley, and the music-hall greats Dan Leno and George Robey, later joined by Bud Flanagan. For years, the Club was also home to the Grand Order of Water Rats, the great fraternity of British variety artists and entertainers. The theatre ran in the founder's own family, too: Jack Harrison's daughters and grandson all made their names as actors.
That tradition has never been broken. Actors and performers remain among our members today, and the Club continues to champion the theatres, players and storytellers of the West End. Independent cinema is the natural heir to that inheritance: it is made by people who, like the best of our predecessors, would rather follow their own vision than anyone else's. Supporting the filmmakers of the Soho Film Awards, who do exactly that against long odds, is simply the Club doing what it has always done.
Members are warmly encouraged to follow the festival, to seek out the winning films, and to raise a glass to all those who reached the Official Selection. Our congratulations to every one of them.
Full details of the winners, trailers and programme are published on the festival's official website, the official source of information about the awards:
- Winners: sohofilmawards.com/more/winner
- Programme: sohofilmawards.com/programme
- Festival home: sohofilmawards.com
