I’ve found a low-effort, high-reward, Brexit-safe alternative to European city breaks

I’m done with foreign city breaks. I’m waving goodbye to open-top bus tours, to plastic pocket ponchos, to over-priced entry tickets and hastily embroidered tit-tat.

Unless I’m guaranteed a good time, that last-minute return flight to Baku just doesn’t seem worth the carbon emissions. Sorry, Wizz Air.

No, a new type of weekend break has stolen my affection and my money. It’s passport-free, a fraction of the price and requires near to no forward-planning.

I’m calling it the ‘Short Film Festival Fling’ and it basically involves sitting and watching and eating and drinking your way around Britain’s own metropolises.

It’s a low-effort, high-reward, Brexit-safe investment in your cultural capital that increasing numbers of us have been enjoying over the past few years.

As for me? I’ll admit, short film festivals never appealed. As a university student in York I thought I’d taken enough ‘library breaks’ - gallery, cafe or pub excursions, most of which never returned to whence they started - to qualify as a local expert.

Yes, I’d witnessed the lanyard-laden Aesthetica Short Film Festival attendees sweep through the city periodically each autumn but I’d never condescend to join them, assuming all the while, with a smug faux-worldliness I’ve hopefully since shed, that I knew best.

Until last October, that is, when I became one of the lanyard-laden. Risible though I initially felt, my lanyard opened doors I never knew existed; doors usually only opened by those with @york.gov.uk email domains. A hefty, woodwormed slab of a door opened on to a screening of surreal foreign language comedy skits at the National Centre for Early Music and I lost my Virtual Reality video virginity in the hidden bowels of the York Theatre Royal.

Forty-six films, five panels and two after-parties later I was a full convert - the lanyard no longer a begrudged accessory but a swishy badge of honour, worn with pride.

In typical fashion, I’m a little late to the party. What was, in 2011, a finely-woven itinerary of screenings which accommodated about 7,000 guests, has become a complex patchwork of panel discussions, workshops, master-classes and parties which attracted over 26,000 film fans last year. In that same time-frame, streaming platforms like Vimeo and YouTube have wheedled their way from our computers into our pockets, making short film more immediately accessible than ever before.

It begs the question: why are people increasingly seeking out a good old-fashioned sit-down screening?

Cherie Federico, founder of Aesthetica Magazine and Director of the festival, has her own theories. Firstly, “it’s never been cheaper or easier to produce a film,” she points out, before secretly disclosing just how many submissions her team diligently waded through last year.

Unusual film-cum-game-cum-experiential-experiments, among them. “It’s super exciting,” says Federico of the ‘immersive film lab’ due to launch at 2019’s festival. “It could be that in five years, it really catches on and that’s just how people experience film, in a communal way with a headset on. Who knows?

“More importantly,” she adds, “Great film can change lives. It can take you to places you didn’t know before and it can introduce you to new cultures and ideas.” It’s this feeling of connectedness that gets people hooked, she explains. “At a festival, you’re able to sit in a room together and share a communal experience. There’s no way to replicate that on your phone”. For all that’s written about the divisiveness of the digital world, Aesthetica Short Film Festival was a refreshing reminder of its merits.

At this point in the story I should insert a substantive anecdote. But where to begin? There was the ‘women and power’ screening held in the King’s Manor, which covered the gamut of 21st century women’s issues, from revenge porn to tampon tax. It was the closest King’s Manor - henceforth dubbed ‘Queen’s Manor’ - has ever come to pussy riot.

And then there was Black Sheep, which told the real life story of Cornelius Walker, whose mother - horrified by the killing of Damilola Taylor in 2000 - relocated their family from an estate in Peckham to a nazi-sympathising neighbourhood in Essex, and the consequent violent identity struggles he endured there as a young black man. The auditorium was so transfixed that the contents of a pin factory could have been dropped on the floor and no one would have noticed. “Such a powerful piece of work,” echoes Federico.

But film purists beware: if you’re that person who cringes at the crunch of popcorn underfoot then a short film festival might not be your cup of tea. At a festival like Aesthetica’s - which aims to show more than 300 films over 5 days - clashes were inevitable. It didn’t take long before I was inured to the constant dribble of cinephiles, hurriedly stumbling over feet and bags in pursuit of the next screening and I began to enjoy it.

Over the weekend, York became charged with a peculiar energy which pushed and pulled me from a screening in one medieval nook to a panel discussion in another brutalist cranny. The parameters of the city I once knew as a student became warped beyond recognition, as if re-traced on a map made of putty. The festival provided a necessary reminder that, while foreign travel might have a certain glamour, there’s a mine of untapped brilliance right here on our doorstep.

And so, as the organised among us (myself excluded) set about organising a trip to divide the dreary hinterland that exists between the summer holiday and Christmas celebrations into two slightly more manageable portions of emptiness, I ask why not take a chance on a short film festival? It might reframe an old city in a new light and be the wake-up call you never knew you needed.

Forget the city break, say I. It’s all about the Short Film Festival Fling.

Five short film festival flings just waiting to happen

Aesthetica Short Film Festival

City: York

Dates: November 6-10, 2019

Perfect for: Those who want a polished, professional operation in beautiful surrounds.

This is the one time a year that York - famously home to Nestlé’s Kit-kat factory, the National Railway Museum and the Jorvik Centre - can make a stab at trendiness. As undoubtedly the biggest short film festival in the country, last year’s event hosted discussions with industry insiders from Condé Nast, Dazed and StudioCanal while screenings covered everything from life as a Syrian refugee to the comical drudgery of office politics. asff.co.uk

Underwire Film Festival

City: London

Dates: September 13-22, 2019

Perfect for: Right-on urbanites with an underground sensibility.

Yes, the name does refer to a lady’s undergarb. Feeling flushed? Probably best you keep scrolling. This East London-based festival claims to “showcase the raw cinematic talents of women” and does so in style with screenings in the brutalist Barbican Centre and Clapton’s crowdfunded, hidden gem - The Castle Cinema. You buy tickets per screening so you can pick and choose exactly what you want to see. underwirefestival.com

Encounters Film Festival

City: Bristol

Dates: September 24-29, 2019

Perfect for: Laidback, artsy types.

Bristol’s offering revolves around the city’s harbour area which, fringed by the Arnolfini contemporary art gallery and the Watershed cinema (a converted warehouse which ordinarily boasts a schedule of arthouse films), is known by locals as a creative hub. Expect a couple of surprise venues, too: last year’s attendees were bussed out to nearby Boiling Wells city farm for a screening under the stars. encounters-festival.org.uk

Iris Prize Festival

City: Cardiff

Dates: October 8-13, 2019

Perfect for: the entire spectrum of humankind - it will particularly resonate with those who identify as LGBTQ.

If your last foray into gay film was the 2005 adaptation of Brokeback Mountain, it’s time for an autumnal trip to Cardiff where the Iris Prize Festival will be presenting a six-day itinerary of LGBT narrative and short films. Other LGBT short film festivals do exist, but at £30,000, the eponymous Iris Prize awarded by a panel of judicious critics to the best in show, is the heftiest of them all. The competition is as fierce as the parties are booming. irisprize.org

Edinburgh Short Film Festival

City: Edinburgh

Dates: October 26-November 10, 2019

Perfect for: Leggy endurance athletes

What would a trip to hilly Edinburgh be without much sitting down? For every peak - and at incremental stages along the ascent up said peak - there’s a cafe waiting for you to rest your weary legs. At Edinburgh short film festival, each screening is hard-earned, enhanced even, thanks to a constant trickle of endorphins. Your exertion won’t go unrewarded either - one film was projected from a pancake kiosk last year. edinburghshortfilmfestival.com

Tickets for this year's Aesthetica Short Film Festival are released on 1st July. Robbie stayed at the The Mount Royale Hotel in York (from £95 per night).

Until last October, that is, when I became one of the lanyard-laden. Risible though I initially felt, my lanyard opened doors I never knew existed; doors usually only opened by those with @york.gov.uk email domains.

A hefty, woodwormed slab of a door opened on to a screening of surreal foreign language comedy skits at the National Centre for Early Music and I lost my Virtual Reality video virginity in the hidden bowels of the York Theatre Royal.