Preparations are in full swing ahead of a town's inaugural film festival set to take place later this month.

The week-long event will celebrate independent efforts from filmmakers across the east of England and nationally.

Including 86 independent film screenings, question and answer sessions with filmmakers and inspiring talks, the festival will take over a number of local venues, including East Point Pavilion, The Grit Arts Centre, and Lowestoft Library.

The festival also includes a number of competitive categories, including best British short, best student film, best two-minute movie, best documentary, best experimental short and best East Anglian short.

Almost 300 submissions were made for competitions ahead of the first festival.

The festival's Top Picks list includes A Love Letter to Row 116, by local filmmaker Jordan Thomas Sendall; Tourettes and I, a poignant story raising awareness of the condition; the East Anglian premiere of Right of Way; and 12 other independent films.

Joshua Freemantle, development producer of Sunrise Studios - part of Access Community Trust who run the festival - said: "We have a really exciting and varied programme of films, that audiences across Lowestoft otherwise wouldn’t be able to access or view and we’re lucky to be bringing lots of films to be showcased in Lowestoft that will be receiving their first ever public audience premieres.

“We’ve put together our top picks list of films that we think audiences won’t want to miss out on, and this acts as a guide to help them know what films they should book when browsing through the large scale of choice we have on offer in this year’s film programme.

“We hope to see plenty of film lovers supporting the first ever edition of this event, which is set to become an annual celebration of independent film on the east coast for our whole region.”

The festival, which is supported by the BFI Film Audience Network, was awarded funds from the National Lottery to bring the project to more audiences across the UK.

Tickets must be booked in advance for most screenings which are free or low-cost, and can be made on the Lowestoft Film Festival website, with all proceeds going to local charity Access Community Trust.

The festival starts on Saturday, October 22, running until Friday, October 28.