Mia Bays, outgoing head of the BFI Filmmaking Fund.

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Mia Bays is winding down her tenure in charge of one of the biggest backers of British independent film, the British Film Institute’s Filmmaking Fund.

She’s done and seen it all over the past five years, having become the first person ever to hold the position for a fixed term — a change implemented in recognition of just how influential the job is — and joining at a time when the industry, post-pandemic, had been transformed for good.

Bays, who will leave her post in October of this year, has experience in producing, exhibition, distribution and international sales strategy. She considers herself a cultural and gender equity activist, and with the BFI Filmmaking Fund, consolidated all of that expertise into overseeing a budget of around 20 million pounds ($27 million) a year. She’s put relatively unknown filmmakers up for Oscar consideration, made BAFTA winners out of others, and done it all with what she says is a knack for kicking the industry’s risk aversion to the curb.

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“I think [risk] is absolutely a fundamental part of what the public funds are there for,” Bays tells The Hollywood Reporter ahead of her last Cannes Film Festival as the BFI Filmmaking Fund boss. She cites some of her recent, edgy successes — Rich Peppiatt’s raucous “print the legend” biopic Kneecap, Harry Lighton’s biker BDSM dramedy Pillion and Akinola Davies Jr.’s tender, Lagos-set My Father’s Shadow, selected as the U.K.’s 2026 Oscars entry — as evidence of the payoff of that audaciousness.

Bays has also invigorated the country’s largest open-access fund by reshaping the team, improving how the fund is performing against the BFI’s inclusion targets and even setting up brand new pots of money for more experienced directors (the Impact Fund), as well as higher-budget, live-action shortform projects (Future Takes). Financing just 12 feature films a year, she’s homed in on talent pursuing cultural and social reverberations.

With recruitment for her replacement officially underway, Bays sat down with THR to talk about the obstacles plaguing the British film industry — and what we should be optimistic about. She discusses some of the buzzy BFI movies hitting the Croisette this year, such as Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning; why co-productions might just be British film’s savior; and the key piece of advice she has for her successor.

Reflecting on the past five years, what feelings come up for you?

Well, I subscribe to creative renewal, so I think it’s healthy. I think five years is a good amount of time to effect enough change — to do so quite fast — and then to leave a steady ship, I hope. Reflecting on the films and the features we’ve supported, we won a BAFTA for best [British] debut two years running, Kneecap in 2025 and My Father’s Shadow this year, both incredibly unusual, I would say, and fresh voices and narratives. We also won the best [British] Independent Film Award [BIFA] two years running [with] Kneecap and Pillion. Awards are only one arbiter of impact, obviously. But our films have been selected as the U.K. entry for best international feature at the Oscars — Santosh in 2025 and My Father’s Shadow in 2026. And then … Two Black Boys in Paradise, which is supported through our short animation fund, won the BAFTA for best short animation this year. And Magid / Zafar, which is through Future Takes — our higher-budget short scheme — won the BIFA for best short and was also nominated for a BAFTA.

‘Pillion’

A24

What comes into the decision-making process for you — what must a project have to get funding?

Our fund priorities are a really important steer. So it’s really vital to us that whoever is applying understands what our priorities and what we are looking for, and what steers our decisions as they’re applying. That’s been a very big part of the work — to make sure that the fund is transparent. There are six fund priorities, [and] that’s a very important tool. There are other frameworks around having a balanced slate, prioritizing U.K.-wide, so not everything being made is from London and the South East — that we really are entirely rep

The Riskiest Job in British Film: Mia Bays on the BFI Filmmaking Fund