YOUNG people across Bury can enjoy three weeks of free cinema next month as part of the Into Film Festival.

The world’s biggest youth film festival returns to Bury from November 8 to November 24 with a diverse range of events for five to 19-year-olds.

Open to schools, colleges, youth leaders and home educators, the festival uses the magic of film to engage young minds in a broad range of topics, from mental health and anti-bullying to the environment.

The festival has support from all the major cinema chains, as a few independent and unusual venues.

Highlights will include Oscar winning, coming-of-age drama Moonlight with an introduction and talk by Cinema for All, the national organisation for community-led cinema as well as free screenings of films including Zootropols, Moana, Sing and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.

The festival is hosted by Into Film as part of an on-going initiative to put film at the heart of young people’s learning and personal development, and made possible by support from the BFI, Cinema First, a wide collaboration with UK cinema industry partners and delivery partners National Schools Partnership.

Actress Rosamund Pike, star of Gone Girl, recently attended one of the Into Film Festivals.

She said: “To be in a crowded cinema full of young, enthusiastic film fans is a real joy because you realise that the work you are doing is going to reach future generations. I think just opening these young people’s minds to the excitement and inspiration that’s possible with film and combining that with education is an immense and important undertaking that Into Film is engaged with and the fact that they do all this for free is just incredible”.