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

Visit Film Website

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

Visit Website

Page updates

This page was last updated on 20th January 2026. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

Suggest amendments

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

A transmasc driver sits in their car staring out of the window

Dread

Director: Gabe Gabriel, Loren Loubser

Year: 2026

Soft-spoken transmasc driver, Toni, is used to dealing with an array of strange customers in their day-to-day work transporting locals and tourists through the economically divided City of Cape Town in their late father’s vintage Daimler. But when Claudia, a German digital nomad with blonde dreadlocks, offloads a traumatic story on a short ride across town, Toni’s car becomes dangerously possessed with Claudia’s invisible trauma demon. Inside Out Film Festival 2026 Wicked Queer: Boston's LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2026

Horror

A disturbed looking man stares straight into the camera

Welcome

Director: Maryam Hamidi

Year: 2026

A famous Black actor accepts a role in a lucrative government film, but when he learns he’s starring in a welcome video for a British Internment camp, he is confronted by the devastating cost of his political indifference.

Black Drama Human Rights Scottish Thriller