BFI CEO Ben Roberts says he wants film to be “firmly in the classroom” in keynote at Edinburgh Film Festival’s inaugural UK Film Conference

Ben Roberts, chief executive of the British Film Institute (BFI), delivered the keynote at the inaugural UK Film Conference at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, framing film education as a key missing element in the sector’s long-term pipeline of audiences and creators. In remarks reported by Deadline, Roberts said, “The missing piece, for me, is having film firmly in the classroom.” The conference, held as part of the Edinburgh Film Festival, brought together film industry figures for a first-of-its-kind UK gathering focused on the direction of the medium and its ecosystem.

Deadline reported that in conversation with Clare Binns, the managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas, Roberts was “candid from the outset about the problems of working for a major public-funding body.” The remarks included a look back at his career before joining the BFI, during which Roberts said he had worked across multiple UK distribution and sales organizations. According to the reporting, Roberts acknowledged that he had been warned before taking on the BFI role, underscoring the tension he sees between institutional mandates and the day-to-day realities of running a film-facing organization.

Roberts’s keynote focused on the role film education could play in expanding who engages with screen culture, rather than leaving audience building to happen only later through releases, festivals, and marketing. By emphasizing the classroom as the starting point, Roberts linked film education to wider cultural participation and the continuity of public engagement with cinema. The remarks were delivered at an event designed to convene industry leadership, with BFI leadership and major exhibition representation in the same setting through the keynote exchange.

Alongside the education theme, Roberts’s comments also drew attention to how public accountability can shape the way film institutions operate. Deadline’s report characterized his discussion as reflecting on the internal constraints that can accompany public-funding responsibilities, including the expectations placed on leadership to align programming, policy goals, and public outcomes. Roberts’s emphasis on “problems” in that context appeared aimed at giving conference attendees a view of the pressures that come with operating a national institution rather than a purely commercial film business.

The keynote conversation took place at the inaugural UK Film Conference, an event within the Edinburgh Film Festival, positioning the remarks as a formal marker of the conference’s purpose: to put sector issues in front of stakeholders in a structured setting. With Roberts’s comments centered on both a long-term educational objective and the institutional realities of running the BFI, the keynote combined strategic framing with a behind-the-scenes perspective on governance and mission obligations.

Deadline reported that the keynote followed Roberts’s career background in UK distribution and sales, an experience he cited when discussing how he understood the industry before stepping into the BFI role. In the conversation format with Picturehouse’s Clare Binns, the reporting described Roberts’s responses as including early candor about institutional challenges, not simply broad advocacy. The conference setting placed those points in front of film operators and decision-makers, with the education message serving as a connective thread to audience development and cultural access.

The BFI CEO’s keynote at the Edinburgh Film Festival’s inaugural UK Film Conference therefore combined a specific policy-adjacent message about school-based film learning with a practical account of how leadership at a public-funding institution can complicate implementation. The next steps after the conference were not detailed in the Deadline report, but the public keynote itself placed “having film firmly in the classroom” at the center of the inaugural program for a national-level UK film conversation.

The event’s emphasis on the classroom and on institutional pressures highlighted two themes that recur across public culture funding: the need for early audience formation and the need for operational alignment between public purpose and industry expectations. Roberts’s remarks, as reported, did not present a detailed rollout plan in the coverage, but they offered an immediate statement of intent and a candid description of leadership challenges at the BFI as the conference began.