Babamamadada

Director: Sarah Tremlett

Year: 2025

Dark undercurrents interact in the lives of Victorian artist – James McNeill Whistler – and a bargeman (one of poetry filmmaker Sarah Tremlett’s ancestors) on the River Thames in London. Based on Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge, the poem is written in neo-symbolist mode and the contemporary footage is of the same view as the original. The soundscape by leading Belgian composer Marc Neys, though not inspired by Debussy, evolved from Tremlett’s fascination with his repetitive musical phrases, and his friendship with Whistler. Nocturne for a Lighterman is taken from TREE, a forthcoming family history chronicle by Sarah Tremlett, and is an experiment with painting with film.

Director: Sarah Tremlett

Year: 2022

Shakespeare’s male-dominated Ophelia in Hamlet committed suicide by drowning. This film is a warning address to all women but directed at Elizabeth Siddall, known for playing Ophelia in the famous Pre-Raphaelite painting by John Everett Millais. Life imitated art, since Elizabeth caught pneumonia whilst posing in a cold bath for the picture, and was also dominated by her unfaithful and controlling husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, causing her to also commit suicide. In the UK alone ‘200 women take their own lives every year, and nearly 30 women attempt to complete suicide every single day due to domestic abuse’. Parallels can also be made to today’s actresses and Harvey Weinstein, Me Too, and the latest uncovering of the Epstein, Trump, Casablancas etc. case (where young girls were groomed for the sexual appetites of a roll call of powerful, rich men). Villanelle aims to bring hope, rewriting Elizabeth’s fate and the fate of all women facing such distressing thoughts.

Director: Jack Sain

Year: 2026

Long-lost siblings meet for dinner. They end the night in drag. By sunrise, a shocking revelation tests the limits of love and acceptance. PAPER CUT is a debut feature from queer British writer-director Jack Sain. Alex has just found Alice - the birth sister he never knew existed - living four tube stops away. He invites her and her boyfriend over for dinner at the comfortable London home he shares with his boyfriend Sasha. Everyone is on their best behaviour. Everyone has rehearsed. By midnight, all four of them are in drag at a queer nightclub. By 5am, something comes to light that none of them can take back. The film puts social satire through an experimental lens, with a propulsive original score and formally adventurous set pieces, including a split-screen sequence. It asks what happens when people who pride themselves on openness are confronted with something they cannot absorb. The cast includes legendary trans actress Adèle Anderson, Olivier Award nominee and longtime member of cabaret trio Fascinating Aïda, and Barney White of ITV's Professor T - pairing established stage and screen talent with brilliant newcomers.