Tears

Director: Amber Akaunu

Year: 2025

A tender short documentary on friendship and motherhood in Liverpool 8, where over one in six families are headed by a single parent. Through letter-writing, conversations and retrospective walks, director Amber Akaunu delves into her childhood, as the daughter of a single mother, contextualising the experiences of single mothers today. These intergenerational stories are connected by the community found in corner shops, places of worship, neighbours, community centres, family and friends.

Director: Julia Fry

Year:

Using ideas from Carl Jung - exploring and accepting the inner world, Carolyn Abbate - analysis of dissonance to find the narrative voice - and Hilde Lindemann Nelson - using narrative to repair damaged identity, I filmed my process of creating puppets and recorded some of the thoughts that arose as I made them. I utilised emergent practice in the filmmaking, which meant letting go of preconceived ideas to let narrative arise in the moment. I wanted my puppets to unite, rather than fight in the traditional Punch and Judy manner.

Director: Jack Jeffreys

Year: 2026

Fish are nightly invaders of my sleep. Work consumes my dreams. Night gives way to another commute; adverts appear before me, their faces drawn tight. The day passes again, and at night, within the walls of my workplace, a fishmonger’s in London, dreams appear again, this time, a grief-stricken reverie, memories of my father. The film's title is inspired by Maurice Blanchot’s ‘The Book to Come’ which incited my exploration of whether images can capture anything sacred in a world of dispossession. A diaristic, psychogeographic journey through a city that metastasises uncontrollably before me, the film captures a form of alienation that supersedes and confounds the trajectory of grief. What is lost when all becomes gloss? Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026