THE first feature film to be shot entirely in York will receive its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this month.

Made on a shoestring budget of only £7,000 by York writer-director Miles Watts, with financial support from Herbert Lockwood and equipment hired through the York Film Trust, the Gothic vigilante comedy CrimeFighters will be shown in the Edinburgh Filmhouse 3 at 9.45pm on June 25.

Watts’s black-and-white film then will open exclusively at the Picturehouses chain of cinemas around the country on July 2, including London and City Screen, York, where Miles worked until recently as an usher.

“Getting the film selected for the Edinburgh International Film Festival is a big deal because, first of all, it means that a very important festival takes the film seriously enough to screen it – and considering it cost such a tiny amount to make, I hope that is deeply encouraging to anyone out there who wants to do the same,” he says.

“It’s great news for York, whose filmmaking community has grown considerably in the last few years, and I hope it will only solidify York filmmakers’ ambitions to make the films they want to make and get them out there.

“CrimeFighters is a commercial indie genre film after all, albeit one made for only a few thousand, and should have as much chance as any film to reach an audience, so EIFF and Picturehouses should be commended for supporting small films.”

Watts had grown tired of the output and attitude of British films and wanted make something fun and escapist in the style of the films he grew up watching. Having already made his no-budget feature film debut in 2007 with the band-on-the-road movie The BandWagons and created the Zomblogalypse web series, he filmed CrimeFighters in the shadowy streets and snickleways of York, turning the ancient city into Yorkshire’s menacing answer to Gotham City in the looming shadow of the Minster.

Utilising local talent, drawn from the likes of York St John University, where he had studied English Literature, Miles depicts York as a city beset by a crime wave. Danger is everywhere, people are afraid, and three bored twentysomething friends need something to do that doesn’t involve the pub. Whereupon Emma Keaveney, Paul Trimmer and Debbie Hard turn themselves into impromptu vigilantes to make the streets safe to walk once more in an 80-minute comedy with sly nods to comic books and pop culture.

“You can get a lot of mileage out of the ‘bored friends overcoming small town life’ story, and I think it’s something a lot of people can relate to,” says Miles. “I don’t relate to ‘It’s grim up North’ type of films because I’m an optimist and I look to movies for escapism among other things.

“I do enjoy ‘gritty’ cinema but with CrimeFighters I wanted to create a small, British movie with something else to say; that working in minimum-wage jobs is hard and that there is a way out through solidarity with your friends and community. Writing films was my way out of despondency as it’s the one thing I’m any good at.”

Escapism also marks Miles’s cult web series, Zomblogalypse, now in its third season of deliberately shaky-camera zombie antics. Yet for all the zombies, vigilantes, thugs and gangs in his playful work, he does not consider York to be a particularly violent town. “But it does have its problems like anywhere else and some of that is just the effect of small-town life. I expressed my frustration with it all by having our heroes in CrimeFighters literally fighting for their lives,” he says.

Miles foresees a bright future for York as a film-making city: “I’ve been fortunate to meet and work with a number of very talented filmmakers and more and more are joining to filmmaking community. I’d like to see York taken seriously as a filmmaking community and I hope CrimeFighters may go some way towards implementing that,” he says.

With that in mind, he has decided to leave his ushering post at City Screen to concentrate on his MilesTone Productions film company. “I want to focus on taking the film around the country, continue to film Zomblogalypse and to make opportunities for myself and my filmmaking colleagues,” he reasons. “We all feel that this next year could be important in the future of York as a filmmaking city; it’s brimming with talent.”

Edinburgh box office, 0131 623 8030; City Screen, York, 0871 902 5726.