A LONG-PLANNED Wellington Film Festival is set to take place later this year.

Wellington Town Council’s town centre committee has been discussing holding a movie festival for the past few years, but everything has been put on hold because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But now it looks set to go-ahead from September 30 to October 2 with the Somerset Film organisation providing an event schedule.

The festival will include the film Odette, made in 1950, which will be screened at Odette’s Tea Room in High Street, Wellington.

The tea room was named after Odette Hallowes, an agent for the UK’s Special Operations Executive in France during the Second World War.

Odette lived at Whiteball, just outside Wellington, before the war and her brave actions in France saw her receive the George Cross, an MBE and the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest award for courage.

She was captured by the Germans in 1943, condemned to death and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp to be executed, but against all odds she survived.

Odette was also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Sansom, and she was codenamed Lise.

The film Odette stars Anna Neagle as Odette and Trevor Howard as Peter Churchill, the British agent she worked with and married after the war. Peter Ustinov plays their radio operator Alex Rabinovitch.

Councillors have agreed to carry forward £8,000 from the council’s current 2021-22 budget to help finance the film festival.

A website for the film festival is available at www.wellingtonfilmfestival.org.uk and a schedule of events will be published at a later date.