Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

It all started in 1955, when 100 English folk dancers responded to a simple newsprint advert announcing a 'seaside holiday with dancing'. Little did this small gathering know that this was the genesis of the 'longest running folk festival in Europe', growing into one of the most important events in the English folk calendar, boasting up to 55,000 attendees across a full week of music, international dancers and song from all over the world.
This documentary takes audiences back in time, remembering how Sidmouth Folk Festival began and why it grew exponentially at times, how Prince Phillip and Princess Elizabeth helped the explosion of interest in English folk dance and also eventually folk song, alongside exploring English folk traditions and their place in England and the UK today. Featuring Ralph McTell, Martin and Eliza Carthy, India Electric Co., and using unseen film and photographic archive, live performance and interviews with original attendees from 1955 and recent years audiences are invited to relive the highs and lows of this jewel in the English folk crown.

Synopsis

A personal short documentary about dancing as a plus size woman through the lens of pop culture. A radical and joyful reimagining of awesome dance scenes with the bodies that traditionally get pushed to the back taking up space front and centre.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 Bridging the Gap - World premiere

Synopsis

FriendsontheOutsidetellsthestoryofan incarcerated man called Jamie who finds joy and comfort inside by foraging for weeds and caring for birds. It questions whytheUK prison system is currentlyinits biggest expansioninmore than a century, exposing naturalising language around this expansion.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 Bridging the Gap - World premiere

Synopsis

An intimate portrait of London’s East and South East Asian clubbing community, a world in which the allure of raving, extravagance, and hyperpop becomes an affirmation of love, acceptance, and joy. This world-within-a-world is instantly familiar, filled with ambitions, desires, and yearnings that reflect the joy and resistance of today.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

What does it take for us to act on the climate crisis – especially if we’re the kind of person who should already be acting? In this funny, relatable portrait, a concerned yet ineffectual dad finds the first step is letting those unbearable feelings of climate anxiety in, instead of pushing them aside. But as he meets others like him, he discovers how oil-backed propagandists funded our denial and paralysis. He sets out to unmask the vested interests responsible, helping raise a generation’s leading authors in a vibrant chorus.
MY EXTINCTION is a revealingly honest account of how to feel your feelings, act on your privilege, and get active when threatened with extinction.

Synopsis

Never Mind Walnut Street is Marta Dyczkowska’s heartfelt letter to her dear friend, walking him through the changes in the city they once shared together.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 Bridging the Gap - World premiere

Synopsis

A real war story is not the story of men at war. A haunting encounter with a boy injured by a random bullet sends director Carol Dysinger to investigate what happened to him, who fired the shot, who is responsible? During her fifteen years following the war in Afghanistan, she often finds herself behind the curtains of an Afghan home where Bibi Hajji maintains her extended family – struggling with her grief and her remaining sons' anger and pain at the loss of their brother. ONE BULLET evolves from a procedural to an excavation of human loss and the redemption of female friendship. How do we deal with guilt and injury across vast social, cultural and religious divides? Ask two tough old broads drinking tea.
Official Selection Galway Film Fleadh 2023 - World Cinema Competition -European premiere - Winner Best International Documentary

Synopsis

During the Pink Moon season, a daughter revisits her childhood home to work the garden with her father as it blossoms in the politically and physically divided island of Cyprus. It once facilitated her nightmares of the conflict and now their conversations. The filmmaker unearths the inter-generational trauma and healing.
Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 - Bridging the Gap - World premiere
Official Selection DOC NYC 2024

Synopsis

Ruth was barely a teenager when her mother passed down her Medallion, etched with a golden portrait of Nefertiti. A symbol of beauty and strength. Not only was this medallion an artefact, it was an emblem of her mother’s inconceivable plight; captured in middle school by the Derg communist military regime and raised in a prison camp for years, separated from her family.
This story follows Ruth's mother's early memories of the Derg Genocide and how she first became in possession of the medallion upon her escape. The medallion symbolised her freedom and was passed down to Ruth for her to pass on to her children and to keep her family and country’s story alive.
Official Selection DOC NYC 2023 - North American premiere
Official Selection Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

Yuliia has become a refugee in Scotland due to the war in Ukraine. She is fighting for the future of her children while trying to maintain her relationship with her husband, who is on the frontline.
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 Bridging the Gap - World premiere

Synopsis

Based on the award-winning book ‘Scala Cinema 1978-1993’ by Jane Giles (FAB Press, 2018) this feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll rep house which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.
The film combines 50 new interviews with diverse audience members who went on to become filmmakers, musicians, writers, actors and artists, combined with previously unseen archive material and iconic movie clips.
With its universal themes of youthful discovery and the underdog vs. the establishment, this is no nostalgia trip but rather a film of universal relevance with clear parallels between then and now. Above all, it's a hilarious and joyous celebration of cinema-going.
Official Selection Il Cinema Ritrovato Bologna 2023 - World premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023

Synopsis

Noel Coward was one of the most important figures of the 20th Century. He was not only a great playwright, but also one of the best songwriters, directors and performers. Coward’s triumphs across theatre, film and music mark him out as one of only a handful of artists whose mastery has moulded the spirit of a nation.
And yet he grew up poor, left school when he was only eleven and was full of contradictions – he was a sex symbol who was gay, a rebel who was also a patriot, his plays were set in glamorous drawing rooms while he lived in the smallest room in his mother’s boarding house. He was a true star, who had a style and character that personified the very idea of Englishness. And yet he ended his life in exile from the country he came to define.
He was an extraordinary man that led an extraordinary life.