Tickets for the 20th Flatpack Festival (8–16 May) go on sale on 30 March, with UK premieres spanning cinema, music and audio-visual art plus some fantastic one off events for their anniversary.

Highlights include Spirit of the Tramp, Carmen Chaplin’s documentary revealing that Charlie Chaplin was a Roma boy born in Black Patch Park, Smethwick. Carmen Chaplin will attend the gala screening.

Two decades since its beginnings as a film night in a Digbeth pub, Flatpack continues to foreground Birmingham’s artists, stories and communities alongside the best new international work.

A major strand of the festival celebrates Midlands homegrown talent. Victoria Wood is honoured with a special screening at Midlands Arts Centre, alongside a comedy bus tour led by Rachel Baker and Barbara Nice (Janice Connolly), visiting sites from Wood’s career including The Sportsman Pub.

Elsewhere, German-Brummie artist Michael Wolters stages Fairlight, an electropop musical about the invention of tennis, at The Archery in Edgbaston - the world’s oldest tennis club. Up the road, at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, star Paul McGann will attend Withnail and I.

Year-round, Flatpack delivers Midlands movie magic with pop-up screenings across the region. At the festival's 20th edition, local stories continue with the late photographer Martin Parr celebrated through Black Country documentaries Teddy Gray’s Sweet Factory and Turkey and Tinsel.

A world premiere of local filmmaker Kyle Green’s short on Dudley Road Hospital gives audiences the opportunity to share their memories.

And for those with a taste for bizarre musicals, there’s a rare screening of Curriculee Curricula, filmed at the University of Birmingham in 1978 and starring rock singer Chris Farlowe.

A 40th Anniversary screening honours Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs too. Free installations and workshops in partnership with Handsworth Compost Village, including on nature animation and composting skills, introduce audiences to the greener side of this iconic neighbourhood.

Mos Hannanand Usayd Younis’ After Eight explores systemic racism and the miscarriage of justice suffered by Birmingham local Satpal Ram, after an attack in a curry house led to his wrongful conviction for murder - made with The Guardian and BFI Doc Society, screens with a Q&A.

Flatpack itself further expands its global majority outlook through a partnership with the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive, with screenings like Rage and Desire and Difficult Love exploring Black gender and sexuality; and new curatorial work from Birmingham-based trainees, Denise Amory-Reid, Janet Nagudi and Rene Francis-McBrearty.

Community partners, including Film Pardna and Falasteen on Film will co-present workshops, screenings and live events, contributing to Birmingham’s cultural regeneration. At the festival’s Digbeth hub, artist Michael D Kennedy will create work live, embarking on a quest to uncover a mythical subterranean cinema — a reminder that, 20 years on, Flatpack remains blisteringly alive to the underground imagination shaping Birmingham’s future.

To find out more about all these events and many more head to https://flatpackfestival.org.uk/