Dumfries Special Preview Screening Announced

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.