Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

ELEVEN DAYS IN MAY is a portrait to remember the children killed in Gaza last year during the bombings in May 2021.

Synopsis

A film which attempts to navigate bereavement following suicide. Through animation, archival footage, and sound, director Miranda Peyton Jones guides us to the heart of her grief, love and loss. The voices of her family and her father’s music underscore this deeply personal, powerful, and poignant film. Royal Television Society Awards 2022 - Winner - Best Documentary Official Selection British Documentary Film Festival 2023 Official Selection British Animation Awards 2024

Synopsis

Winning a war is not easy. LANCASTER tells the story of the iconic WW2 bomber, through the words of the last surviving veterans. Starting with 'The Blitz' we follow our 38 contributors as they join-up, learn to fly and go to war. With the enemy strong and RAF Bomber Command badly equipped, losses were high. But eventually, the tide turned with the introduction of the 'Lanc'. Designed to take the war to the enemy - and to win it – the Lancaster was both loved and feared. From the firestorms of Hamburg, through the famous Dambuster raids and the still-controversial bombing of Dresden, emotional testimonies tell of courage, fear, friendship and moral ambiguity. For there was a deadly price to be paid in the lethal night skies over Germany - 55,000 aircrew and 600,000 civilians were killed. Such was the cost of defeating the Nazis and restoring peace to Europe.

Synopsis

Walton, North Liverpool. An area severely effected by austerity and home to the safest Labour seat in the country. Filmed over three-years by filmmakers who hail from the area, MANIFESTO is a first-hand account of grass-root community activism, depicting the work and effort that goes into party politics away from Westminster. National topics - the NHS, education, the environment, worker’s rights, Brexit, internal selections and the 2019 General Election - monumental issues across society, are discussed and debated as Walton Constituency Labour Party campaign for change through Labour’s ‘For The Many’ manifesto.

Synopsis

The unlikely story of a Glaswegian visual artist, Stephen Skrynka, and his dangerous life-long obsession with riding the ‘Wall of Death’. Stephen dreams of transforming the traditional fairground motorbike attraction into an art form, but underestimates the difficulties of combing his artistic vision with the commercial instincts of his collaborators. Alone, with no finance and a pandemic raging, Stephen rashly decides to hand-build his own Wall out of recycled wood. Facing a crisis of money and self-belief, salvation arrives in the shape of unexpected comradeship, anonymous donations and the kindness of strangers. Stephen builds his Wall. But can he ride it?

Synopsis

Will, a frustrated animator, records a message to his mother. He explains “confessionally” that the film he was trying to make with his collaborator, Ainslie Henderson, failed. It was a film that they were making about her, after she contracted mouth cancer 5 years ago. He explains the purpose of him talking to her now, in a candid way about it, might just be the final closure his Mum and family need. Why did he invent an imaginary cat called DOM who exists only on his computer and begins to get in the way? Needing to move on, the film they shot and animated will now explain what they were trying to do. The film plays out from Will’s perspective today, a composition of thoughts, images and scenes - reflecting and editing together a letter to his mother. A self-reflective and self-referential film that blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction. This video message or ‘letter’ to her is a device that guides the film’s narrative. As if being ‘live edited’ the film has a playful urgency, enabling the viewer to authentically experience the journey with Will and the other characters.

Synopsis

GAZZA is a deeply personal portrait of Paul Gascoigne, one football's most famous tragic heroes. It is also an insight into 20 years of modern British history as it charts the creation media's lust for celebrity gossip. Told solely with contemporary archive, GAZZA gives a startling new perspective on the profoundly immoral and illegal lengths the tabloid press went to in order to gain access to Paul's private-life and manipulate it for their own gain.

Synopsis

An emotive, intimate film portrait of the life and death of Northern Irish journalist Lyra McKee, who was murdered by dissident Republicans the day before Good Friday, April 2019. Directed by her close friend, documentarian Alison Millar, the film seeks answers to her senseless killing through Lyra’s own work and words. In just 29 years, she rose from working-class roots in the epicentre of war torn Belfast to become an internationally renowned investigative journalist, seeking justice for crimes that had been forgotten amid the euphoria surrounding the 1998 Good Friday Peace agreement. As the voice of her ceasefire generation, Lyra represented hope for a future free of conflict. Her death is another tragic milestone for a country trying to shake off the shackles of its violent past. Official Selection Sheffield DocFest 2022 - Rebellions - UK premiere

Synopsis

Shot on 16mm, MIRRORS is a lucid diary and poetic map of an island, its relationships, customs, rifts and bonds, depicting its diverse individuals, communities, and historic events. As we gaze at our reflection in this film, it takes us on a mesmeric journey through seven unprecedented years, in England.

Synopsis

Why are we so afraid of the dark that we need to brighten the world around us? Shot at night on the "cult" Red Monochrome with Camerimage Winner DOP Mate Herbai, NIGHT BURNS LIKE CIGARETTES approaches Light Pollution through our intimate relation to darkness, torn between love & fear. An anti-consumerist ballad in the night, it has Lily Cole as a Narrator, and British-Zimbabwean singer and dancer Kwaye.

Synopsis

Luke Ellis' innovative business takes food waste from local restaurants and uses organic cycling methods to grow micro-herbs and vegetables from an underground bioponic farm under the streets of Sheffield's industrial quarter.

Synopsis

In THE RE-EDUCATION OF JI ZHIHAO the filmmaker Tian Macleod Ji follows his uncle to China’s countryside, on a journey to explore both the tender bonds and the painful memories of the nation’s Maoist past.