A work of speculative cinematic writing, the film is about war and displacement, architecture and place-making. It tells the fragmented biography of the so-called Rock Church, an iconic building in Helsinki and its architects who were excluded from the canon of Finnish modernism. The architects' personal history of displacement due to the Finnish Winter War of 1939 and Soviet occupation is braided with the war on present-day Gaza.
Past and present histories, temporalities and geographies fold into, and over one another collapsing time, place and identities narratively to consider, in the gentlest of tones, the impact of atrocities on contemporary lifeworlds.
Divided by barriers and borders, the three sisters confront their childhood after spending decades apart in culturally and politically diverging countries. For all of them, one moment in life determined everything that followed.
An emotionally revealing essay film.
On 18 June 1984, at the height of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, Orgreave Coking Plant in South Yorkshire became the site of the bloodiest day of the longest and most violent industrial dispute in British history. The media subsequently appeared to lay blame for the violence at the feet of the strikers. Daniel Gordon’s comprehensive documentary doesn’t just overturn this fabrication, it portrays what took place as planned action on the part of the Thatcher government, with the Prime Minister determined to seek redress for the National Miners’ Union’s victory over the Conservative government in the early 1970s and to forever break the union’s role at the heart of British working class society. Released on the 40th anniversary of the battle, and featuring first-hand accounts and archive footage, this is a searing portrait of that tragic event. (Sheffield DocFest Programme)
Official Selection Sheffield DocFest 2024 - World premiere
The story of Catholic nun and leading death penalty abolitionist, Sister Helen Prejean, whose story was first captured in the 1995 film DEAD MAN WALKING. Now, almost 30 years later, filmmaker Dominic Sivyer takes a look at six decades of the life and work of Sister Helen as she continues to be an inspirational force for justice.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2024 - World premiere
BRANDED is a woman’s defiance, in the face of atrocity, to uphold Art and Freedom. Set at some time, in the past, present, or the future. A Ukrainian woman, captured by a regime that forbids artistic expression, challenges her oppressors. She is anonymous, without a presence in the world, the non-existence of a political prisoner. Pacing around the cell, her words directed at the Wall behind her. The Wall that protects her from what is beyond. From other cells, noises of torture are heard. The sounds of conflict increase as the war comes closer. Knowing she will die, her dreams are of the life she used to have, with freedom, laughing and painting in her studio. Her concern is not for herself when she asks, is this the end of Art? She has a vision and imagines Leonardo da Vinci visits her, and asks him, will Art survive? Her desperation increasing, she paints with her own faeces and urine on the Wall. Collapsing, she imagines a future artist visiting her cell. He tells her, Art cannot die, artists are the future.
Kateryna Polishchuk, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, is the voice of the woman in the cell.
Impersonating the style of an NHS training films from 1960s-70s and shot on 16mm, the film is an exercise in queering the healthcare information film. Using a collated archive of healthcare experiences recorded with Birmingham's trans+ community the film explores the critical state of trans healthcare in the UK through ‘medical drag’ re-enactments.
In the early hours of 6 February 2023, a Mw 7.8 earthquake hit a large area of Turkey and Syria. It’s destructiveness was exacerbated by the instability that had torn the region apart. Waad Al-Kateab’s film is powerful record of the disaster, drawing images from TV news reports, social media, CCTV and drone footage, alongside archive material of the region. The shock of the earthquake soon gives way to a damning record of human failure, with Al-Kateab focusing on two Syrian families over the course of ten days, sensitively recording their desperate efforts to find their loved ones. Highlighting official incompetence and a paltry level of humanitarian aid, Death Without Mercy is, above all else, a moving testament to human dignity. (Sheffield DocFest 2024 Programme)
Official Selection Sheffield DocFest 2024
During the conflict in Northern Ireland a practice developed that saw actors hired to dub those associated with the IRA on broadcast media. Via unseen archive footage and interviews with key figures, THE BAN reflects on the British government’s use of the threat of ‘terrorism’ to justify censorship.
Official Selection International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2024 - International premiere
Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025
In 1938 Peter Lucas keeps a journal of British inaction against fascism. His wife Prudie designs ‘Lovers of Gudrun’, for Stockport Garrick Theatre. As Czechoslovakia is occupied, with Peter consumed by politics and Prudie obsessed by Gudrun, fault-lines in their personalities and marriage crack under pressure of impending war.
THE CALLERS tells the stories of people who have called England’s oldest LGBTQ+ phone helpline for over 50 years, seeking guidance on everything from where to find the nearest leather bar to how to come out, navigate an open relationship, impress a new lover or mend a broken heart.
In a future drained of colour where energy credits are the new currency, a zero credit balance leaves one man with no option but to physically power his ailing husband’s hospital treatment. But as his energy fades, so does the possibility of a future together.
