A former local press editor is hoping to turn Tamworth into the Cannes of the West Midlands after taking control of a film festival to be held there this summer.

Nick Hudson, now a director of a Staffordshire-based PR firm, has bought the ownership rights to the Heart of England International Film Festival, which will run for six days next month in the town.

Nick said: “This is the UK’s major movie-making event and now I have the opportunity to take the biggest and develop it into the best.

“Today everyone’s heard of Cannes which gets underway with its usual flotilla of A-list stars.

“But once upon a time no one had heard of it and I want to put this town at the apex of a movie-making mountain where anything Cannes can do, Tamworth can do better.

“I want the event – inextricably linked to this town – to boldly go where they’ve never gone before.”

Nick has nearly four decades of newspaper and publishing experience and has been editor of weekly titles such as St Austell Voice, Folkestone Herald, Paisley Gazette and Tamworth Trader.

In 2007 he was the launch editor of a national English-language newspaper called thinkSPAINtoday, previously a regional title covering the Costa Blanca area.

The film festival will showcase premieres from around the globe at two cinemas in Tamworth and present 28 prizes including a ‘Tamworth Award’ for movies made about the town, in the town or by townspeople.

Among those movies lined up for screening are Jackson, by Pretty Woman writer JF Lawton, Home starring Oscar-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden and documentary An Unlikely Weapon featuring Kiefer Sutherland and former president Bill Clinton.

Oscar winner Kate Winslet’s movie Enigma will also be shown, which is about World War II code breaking and references Tamworth’s own naval hero Colin Grazier – the subject of a book by Tamworth Herald deputy editor Phil Shanahan.