No Ifs or Buts

Director: Sarah Lewis

Year: 2025

Filmed over a 25-year period, CUTS, NO IFS OR BUTS delivers a vital portrait of the low-key, yet world-famous London barbershop ‘Cuts’ – not just a place to get your hair styled but a space for street fashion and pop innovators. Guided by freewheeling founders James Lebon and Steve Brooks who met when one was a Rockerbilly and the other a New Romantic, the salon moved from early 80s post punk roots to become a communal hub for DJs, photographers and style icons, an influencer in the analogue age. The film allows us to bear witness to the passing of time and the profound and often tragic personal change in the hairdressers' lives within the wider context of change in the UK's political and cultural landscape. It highlights the themes of family and creativity and is an anthem of the promise of youth and the friendships that endure (or not) over a lifetime.

Director: Julian Konczak

Year: 2025

Following a pilgrimage through the sacred sounds of India – a land of many faiths, including Vedanta, Islam and Buddhism. Using striking visual material accompanied by an evocative, multi-layered soundtrack, the audience is taken on a unique sonic journey through the sacred sound practices of many of the world’s key religions. A combination of interviews, performances, and natural sounds creates a rich, immersive cinematic experience. With an intimate, direct camera style, viewers can get close to the many spiritual practitioners, musicians, and meditation teachers who form the fabric of the journey. Bubbling hot springs, subtropical nocturnal symphonies of insects, and harsh, frozen mountain winds combine with mantra chanting, classical Hindustani music, and the dynamic temple sounds of drums and trumpets. This audiovisual tone poem invites you to experience heightened sensory awareness and the transformative, healing power of sound.

Director: Eamon Bourke

Year: 2026

Filmmaker Eamon Bourke lost his mother, Sue, when he was three and has no memory of her. When his father decides to sell the remote Lake District home where she died, Eamon returns with his camera to document the house and its clearing. Among Sue’s belongings - diaries, poems, photographs and tapes - he discovers a box of damaged cassette recordings. After painstakingly repairing them, he uncovers something extraordinary: his mother’s voice. Through these intimate audio diaries, Sue speaks candidly about motherhood, sings to her children, and captures fleeting family moments Eamon never knew. One final tape records her describing the onset of hepatitis, days before she fell into a coma and died in 1983. Another, more haunting still, features three-year-old Eamon calling out to his unconscious mother in hospital, in a desperate attempt to bring her back. As Eamon pieces together this archive, he confronts the enduring impact of early loss, speaking with his father and sisters while retracing the emotional landscape of his childhood. Set against the vast beauty of the Lake District, a deeply personal exploration of grief, memory and love - an attempt to recover what was lost, and to finally say goodbye.