It's Wednesday night in South London. Fatimah and Leon, two successful Black Brits, are coming to what should be the end of a good evening at a pop-up restaurant, except neither quite seems ready for the night to end. So they continue.
A taxi ride into the heart of the city sees them hop around from place to place, crossing paths with friendly strangers as they meander through a night they wish could last forever, if only to avoid the inevitable conversation that awaits them.
CUSTOM is the first feature of award-winning Brazilian-born and UK-based filmmaker Tiago Teixeira. In this paranoid horror thriller, a couple of arthouse pornographers struggle to make ends meet while working on custom erotic films. That’s when they encounter ‘The Audience’, a mysterious client offering life-changing money to perform strange rituals on videotape.
An introverted young woman uses a deepfake app to watch romantic films featuring herself and a neighbour until a new government restriction forces her to pursue a relationship in real life and learn that love isn't quite like the movies.
In Accra, Ghana - a group of young men have formed a brotherhood rooted in a unique combination of acrobatics, dance and fire breathing.
In lack of access to any formal training, they have developed their skills through internet tutorials and relentless practice sessions starting at 5am every morning. This troupe of highly-skilled performers have come to represent strength and positivity to their community, especially the youngsters they train and support with their earnings.
They call themselves The Dragon Boys.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2023 - World premiere
Grace Ridhi turns up to Mr Freeman's house to demand he pay for all the overdue bills he owes the council. Mr Freeman prefers a more spiritual approach to such things.
Exploring the relationship between the director, an amputee, and her prosthetist during the making of a prosthetic leg. The filmmaker seeks to demystify an unfamiliar space and ask what it means to create an extension to someone else’s body, questioning prejudice widely seen within our society's consideration of body image.
In this coming of age drama, 11 year old Ama and her 24 year old mother, Grace, take solace in the gentle but isolated world they obsessively create. But Ama’s growing up threatens the boundaries of their tenderness, and forces Grace to reckon with a past she struggles to forget.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2023 - World Cinema Dramatic Competition - World premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023
A French exchange student visits England for the first time and finds himself at the centre of a very British family dynamic.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2023
BAFTA Film Awards 2024 - Nomination - Best British Short Film
A film about culture, colonialism and the power of photographs told by a community in West Africa.
In 1911, the anthropologist Northcote Thomas made a study of the Igbo-speaking people of Nigeria. Among thousands of photographs he made are many portraits of men whose faces are covered with scarification marks known as ichi. These images of deeply-scarred faces appear to confirm colonial-era imaginaries of African customs. Returning the 110-year-old photographs to the communities whose heritage they depict, however, occasions a cultural revival as the traditional custodians of ichi tell their story and re-enact their lost art. Rather than marks of tribalism, ichi signified nobility, and protected people from being enslaved. Ichi cutting was brought to an end in the 1930s by missionaries who regarded it as barbaric. In the film, the few surviving men who bear the scarification marks recall their harrowing childhood experiences having their faces cut and undergoing this transformative rite-of-passage. Spirited despite their advanced years, they talk with a mixture of pride and regret at the loss of traditional Igbo culture. Made collaboratively with the Umudioka community of Neni, the film is filled with song, dance and masquerade, and offers a profound reflection on continuity and change.
Inhabiting a bizarrely unusual body (the body she loves), and navigating daily discrimination, Ella searches the world for another like her – "Is There Anybody Out There?"
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2023 - World Cinema Documentary Competition - World premiere
Official Selection Hot Docs 2023 - Special Presentation
Official Selection Krakow Film Festival 2023 - International Documentary Competition
Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2023
