After winning awards at film festivals in Ireland and Scotland, A Dairy Story is coming home to Dumfries and Galloway for a special preview screening at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre, Dumfries, on Thursday 18th December at 7.30pm.
The 78-minute documentary follows David and his late wife Wilma who spent two decades developing Europe’s first commercially viable cow-with-calf dairy system. The film captures their transformative work of keeping calves with their mothers for months rather than separating them within hours of birth, as most dairy farms do.
Following the screening, David Finlay and Dairy Manager Charles Ellett will take part in a Q&A, offering audience members the chance to hear directly about the challenges and rewards of transforming Rainton’s farming system and to ask questions about the practical realities of cow-with-calf dairying.
Producer Lorna Young said:
“While film is still very much at the beginning of its journey, it was important to us that local audiences – the people who live and work in the landscape where this story unfolds – didn’t have to wait. Rural cinemas are often at the end of the distribution queue, but as filmmakers from this region, telling a story rooted in this place, we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen here.”
The RBC Film Theatre will also screen the film on 20, 21 and 22 January 2026, with additional screenings anticipated at other Dumfries & Galloway cinemas in the new year.
With only 69 seats available, early booking is advised.
What you told us
Audiences told us they left A Dairy Story feeling inspired. Over half were new to the cinema they saw it in, and nine in ten would go back.
Audience survey launched as community screenings approach
A one-week audience survey has been launched alongside the film’s published distribution plan, ahead of community screening bookings opening on 18 October.
The Distribution Plan
As our festival run ends, find out where A Dairy Story is on its distribution journey, including roughly when it will be available for community screenings in the UK and around the world.