Project Detail

The Time Before

Name: The Time Before
Director: Leo Metcalf
Genre: Docufiction, Drama, Experimental
Released: 2025
Duration: 15 min

Synopsis

Haunted by unanswered questions about himself, Olly journeys through his past. His story unfolds in two starkly contrasting realms: the raw simplicity of his childhood, captured in his own drawings, and the fluid, surreal world of his dreams. We glimpse the fractured memories of his early years: an abusive father, a mother lost in the haze of the past, and his sister Sally, a beacon who urged him to find escape and control within his own imagination, transforming nightmares into refuges from reality.
Official Selection Raindance Film Festival 2025 - World premiere
Official Selection Venice International Film Festival (Biennale Cinema) 2025 - International premiere

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Details

Year: 2025
Type of project: XR / Immersive
Running time: 15 min
Director: Leo Metcalf
Producer: Leo Metcalf
Screenwriter: Leo Metcalf
Director of Photography: Leo Metcalf
Sound: Harry J N Parsons
Composer: V.R. Alevizos
Principal cast: Anouk Lawless-Monnot; Simon Chambers; Bean Downes; Leo Metcalf
Other Lead Creative(s): Michael Golembewski (Lead Unity Developer)

Genre

Docufiction Drama Experimental

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Leo Metcalf

Flat 16
Fellows Court
Weymouth Terrace
London
E2 8LP

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Olly sifts through his memories searching to understand why he is the way he is. The narrative swings between two contrasting worlds: his memories of his first years, captured by his childhood drawings, and surreal underwater live-action scenes representing his dreams. We witness fragmented memories of a torn family - an abusive father, a mother whose memory seems faded, and a sister, Sally, encouraging her little brother to escape through imagination and dreams. As memory and fantasy blur, The Time Before becomes a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves to survive, and what is lost in the telling. Official Selection Aesthetica Film Festival 2024

Docufiction Drama Experimental Sci-Fi

Tell Me Everything

Director: Moshe Rosenthal

Year: 2026

In the 1980s, as pop music soars and AIDS spreads, 12-year-old Boaz discovers a shattering truth about his beloved father. Over years, he struggles to mend their fractured relationship and restore their lost connection. Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2026 - World premiere

Drama

A Season in Secret

Director: Matthew Berka

Year: 2027

A SEASON IN SECRET brings together material both close at hand and far away. It is a meditation on things glimpsed at a distance and the limits of perception. What lies behind the screen is hidden and may only be hinted at through the language of visible images and sounds. The film takes some of its cues from the Japanese aesthetic concept of Yūgen, described in part by the 15th-century aesthetician Zeami Motokiyo: “...to stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands.”

Experimental