Home-grown acting, writing and directing talent will be showcased at the St Albans Film Festival this week.

Crime author Matt Arlidge, actor Bob Golding and BAFTA-winning director Dan Smith are all from St Albans and are in the running to win the Best Main Short Film competition.

Bob Golding has played Noddy’s PC Plod, Horace Spendrich in ITV’s Mr Selfridge and makes a usual appearance in St Albans Christmas pantomime at the Alban Arena.

He plays comedy legend Eric Morecambe in a short film entry directed by Paul Hendy called The Last Laugh, about Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper and Bob Monkhouse discussing what it is to be funny.

It won Best Comedy Drama at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.

Writer Matt Arlidge has produced five bestselling DI Helen Grace crime thrillers and has been involved with BBC1’s Silent Witness and soap opera EastEnders. He has written one of the finalist shorts, called The Prowler.

Documentary editor Dan Smith won a BAFTA from David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive and put his mind to the short entry Flyspy, which is about a genius who makes a wireless camera drone on a fly.

They are all up against 16 other finalists for the short film competition prize.

St Albans Festival has celebrated filmmaking in the city for four years now and in the past there have been more than 1,500 short movie entries submitted from 40 countries.

The theme of the 2017 event is The Mind and has a schedule which includes workshops, speakers and a short film competition.

Open air cinema screenings outside St Albans Cathedral are proving popular - a showing of Thelma and Louise on Thursday, July 4 has already sold out.

Film Festival director Leoni Kibbey said: “Thelma and Louise has sold out - very quickly.

“It has been the runaway success of the open air cinema. I can only conclude that St Albans is a great place to screen a feminist chick flick.

“I don’t think the fact that a young Brad Pitt made his name in this film has got anything to do with it!”

There are still tickets available for other films. Visit www.stalbansfilmfestival.com.