Audience survey launched as community screenings approach

The team behind A Dairy Story has launched a short audience survey alongside the publication of the film’s distribution plan, as the film moves from its first phase of UK cinema screenings towards a winter of further dates and the opening of community screening bookings on 18 October.

The distribution plan, published on the film’s website, sets out the step-by-step release the filmmakers have chosen, with a focus on cinemas first, then community screenings across the UK from November, and an international screening day on 7 March 2027. While it’s unusual for a film to make its release plan public, the team have done so in response to demand from people keen to see the film.

The survey will support the intentionally slow distribution plan, which focuses on bringing the film to communities rather than rushing towards an online release. The aim of the survey is to give cinema programmers the evidence they ask for before booking an independent documentary: who the film draws, whether it brings new audiences into a venue, and what those audiences say about it afterwards. 

The survey results, alongside first-hand accounts from people who have seen the film, will be shared with cinemas considering a screening. People who have not yet seen the film are asked where they live and whether they might consider hosting, so that community and international screenings can follow demand.

More than 1,500 people have seen A Dairy Story in cinemas since its release in August, in venues from Aberdeenshire to Cornwall.

Producer Lorna Young said: “Programmers need to make a judgement about whether a film they haven’t seen can fill a room, and for an independently produced and released film, it is something of a leap of faith. We can tell them our occupancy figures, but what they really want to know is who came, whether those people had been to their cinema before, and whether they’d come back. The audience can answer that better than we can, so we’re asking them. 

“We have been enormously grateful for the support cinemas and festival programmers have given A Dairy Story so far in its journey. As we embark on this next stage, we want to share our approach and our findings openly with cinema programmers and potential community screening hosts.”

The survey takes around three minutes, every question is optional, and it closes on Sunday 11^th October. The distribution plan can be read here.