Violet City

Director: John Maxwell

Year: 2020

LIME STREET combines archive footage, documentary, animation and the performance film of COSTA Book Award nominated Jeff Young's play BRIGHT PHOENIX starring Cathy Tyson (Mona Lisa). It explores how changing, sanitising and eradicating the urban landscape distinct to a city, notably the now demolished Futurist Cinema in Liverpool that is featured in BRIGHT PHOENIX, leads to a degradation of culture and a caustic erosion with the past. How do places recall culture and society in a unique way? How do they offer a physical, organic link to new generations? How are they live stages for culture to grow? This is a city that can’t be found in a guidebook, a culture that lives in the walls of places like the Futurist Cinema. When it is torn down, the future vanishes. LIME STREET blends an elegiac play with an investigative documentary, ergo the recent arrest of city Mayor Joe Anderson and current investigation into bribery charges surrounding property development. In an age where city planning and regeneration are so relevant to the present and future of cities, this project explores how retaining and restoring places means so much more than nostalgia.

Director: Sandeep Kumar Paul

Year: 2026

Science teacher Swarna and her partner Driti move to a suburban town for a fresh start. When a student leaks intimate photos of Swarna online, school authorities turn her private life into a disciplinary issue. Official Selection Busan International Film Festival 2026 - World premiere

Director: Yv Shells

Year: 2026

When Arlo arrives to find Marcus has cooked someone else’s favourite meal, a single question begins to unravel an evening that refuses to stay in the present. Through a fractured timeline set entirely within one dining room, we move between Marcus and Arlo and the relationship that came before, with Una, the woman he met at a late-night bus stop and once talked about marrying. The same table, the same chairs, the same arguments about trust, honesty and what it means to truly see someone. As the timelines bleed together, it becomes clear that Marcus has never fully left the past, and that Una’s ghost sits at every table he sets. When Arlo asks what her own favourite meal is and he cannot answer, the film’s quiet devastation lands completely. CLOCKS is a portrait of a man who loves generously but sees poorly, and the women who carry the cost. It asks what we owe the person in front of us while we are still in love with someone we lost, and whether a feeling ever truly ends.