Silent Voices

Director: Charles Harris

Year: 2003

Paradise Grove is the first film by award-winning TV and theatre director Charles Harris. A new British Independent movie, a bittersweet coming-of-age story set in a Jewish old age home in North London, it is also, remarkably, the first contemporary Jewish movie to be made in the UK for ten years. Paradise Grove is a film with a distinctive and unusual voice. Starting with deceptively gentle comedy, it woos us with a colourful parade of sharply observed characters, each with their own quirks and eccentricities, before building to a moving climax with a strong emotional punch.

Director: Angela Clarke

Year: 2026

Imagine hearing your own body: eyes scratching, blood rushing, bones creaking, your heartbeat pounding endlessly. For most, it’s unthinkable. For Dave, it’s daily life. Since 2000, he has lived with Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence Syndrome (SCDS), a rare disorder that turns his body into an echo chamber. This immersive short documentary draws viewers into Dave’s sonic reality through raw narration, stark black-and-white imagery, and an unsettling soundscape. As he recounts years of misdiagnosis and disbelief, the film explores resilience and isolation, ultimately asking why we doubt invisible pain and how empathy begins by truly listening to what we cannot see.

Director: Arwa Aburawa, Turab Shah

Year: 2026

A personal meditation on the intimate ways our lives are shaped by ongoing colonial histories, how we make sense of this knowing and finding joy. Official Selection CPH:DOX 2026 Centered around the filmmakers’ local park, this film is a celebration of London and the resilience of migrant communities that have shaped the city from its beginnings. It’s about the British Empire Exhibition of 1924-25 and a line which stretches all the way from then to today. It’s about Palestine, which sits along this colonial continuum, and a park full of dancing, BBQs, birthday parties and joy. Through a hybrid form that combines documentary, archival footage, and direct animation this film meditates on the colonial remnants lodged in our lives and asks what it means to celebrate, play, and belong amid the rubble of empire.