Downstream

Director: Adam Kossoff

Year: 2018

A fictionalised documentary essay, tracing the politics of the Thames River, from colonialism to global financialisation, through the prism of Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness'. Two unseen people meet in Shoeburyness, where the Thames River meets the North Sea. With a visually distinctive use of tableau shots of locations along the Thames, they narrate their journey to London’s Docklands. The woman quotes from 'Heart of Darkness', but instead of travelling up the Congo River into the heart of Africa, their journey ends in the heart of London’s Docklands, where contemporary darkness reigns. A self-proclaimed ‘accelerationist’, the woman plans to destroy the financial district and accelerate capitalism towards its end, while the man is more concerned for the ecology of the river and our debt to nature.

Director: Adam Kossoff

Year: 2016

Upside down stop-frame images follow a path through Epping Forest on the edge of East London, revealing the beauty of a topsy-turvy forest. The film recalls the attempt by the British government to privatise all the UK forests, but then had to do a U-turn due to large public pressure. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand

Director: Hasan Kattan

Year: 2026

For 14 years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have journeyed together through war and storytelling. Their bond was forged on the frontlines of revolution where their cameras recorded terror and hope, laughter and heartbreak – moments that defined a generation. Years later, their story takes an unexpected turn. Confined inside a UK asylum hotel, Hasan and Fadi document a new chapter shaped not by bombs, but by waiting, bureaucracy, and exile. Amid rising anti-refugee hostility, they turn the camera inward exploring friendship and displacement and how filming itself becomes an act of survival when the future is so uncertain. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2026 - World premiere