Directors Notes

No matter where you are in the film festival landscape – from eager first timer to seasoned award winning pro, or on the other side of the equation, organising your first screening for the local community or a mammoth A-lister like Sundance or TIFF setting the cinematic agenda for this film festival season to come, then one platform alone looms large above all others, FilmFreeway . Evolving...

This week we’re joined by BAFTA winning filmmaker Victoria Mapplebeck to discuss her feature documentary Motherboard which transforms 20 years of solo parenting her son Jim into a groundbreaking work of cinematic self-portraiture as it charts two decades of life—from the shock of an unplanned pregnancy to the joys and challenges of raising a child alone, navigating cancer treatment, and weat...

We recently sat down with Anna Smith – broadcaster, film critic and co-founder of the Girls on Film podcast and awards . Known for her feminist film criticism and advocacy, Anna has spent her career carving out space for women’s voices. In our interview, we cover the breadth of her career and the shifting dynamics of modern film criticism. [ Watch/Read the full interview ] Head to Directors...

DN first had the pleasure of speaking to filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari back in 2011, following the SXSW screening of Attenberg , a film which cemented her position as a linchpin of the Greek New Wave. A couple weeks ago, ahead of its UK cinema release, we sat down together once again to discuss her latest feature Harvest , an adaptation of Jim Crace’s Booker Prize-nominated novel, which stars a...

This week we’re bringing you Nimi’s interview with writer/director Rohan Parashuram Kanawade , whose debut feature Cactus Pears – a tender, life-affirming portrait of grief and queer love unfolding in a rural Indian village – won Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic back in January, the first indian film to ever do so, and a couple of days after this int...

Last Monday saw the British TV Broadcaster Channel 4 release Beth – a project billed as its first ever digital original drama , which was not only broadcast traditionally on linear TV as well as on Channel 4 Streaming , but also arrived for audiences first on Channel 4’s YouTube . Ahead of that, DN friend Nimi Raja sat down with Beth writer/director Uzo Oleh and producer Yaw Basoah for...

In this episode we’re joined by Daisy-May Hudson whom we last spoke to as part of our London Film Festival coverage alongside co-director Sophie Compton for their feature documentary Holloway . Today, Daisy-May returns as the writer-director of feature drama Lollipop , which stars a captivating Posy Sterling as a young woman newly released from prison after serving four months, who is forced...

Back in October, we headed to the Bolton Film Festival (a favourite, regular stop for us on the UK film festival circuit) to sit on the jury as one of the partners for the inaugural Slick Films Fund live pitch event. Of the five Filmmakers pitching their projects in the hopes of walking away with the £10K Grand Prize, it was Bradford-based filmmaker Jordon Scott Kennedy’s estate-set, kitchen-sink...

Self-funded with a minuscule budget of just £150,000 and shot on 16mm in Laos with non-actors and a skeleton crew who had to contend with snakes, poisoned well water and a mid-production camera break down due to the heat, writer/director Joshua Trigg’s feature debut Satu – Year of the Rabbit is pretty much the epitome of independent filmmaking. With Satu about to finish up its UK cinema tour...

This episode marks the last of our Oscar winning short film director interviews and features Sarah chat with Molly O’Brien , who joined DN a couple weeks before the Academy Awards to take us inside her move from producer to director for her Netflix acquired documentary short The Only Girl in the Orchestra , which follows the trailblazing career of musician Orin O’Brien and her beloved double basse...

How did a silent, father-daughter animation crafted over six and a half years in Iran defy odds to win an Oscar? We bring you the second part in our series of interviews with this year’s Academy Award winning short film directors as we speak to Shirin Sohani & Hossein Molayemi , the filmmakers behind In the Shadow of the Cypress who reveal the creative triumphs and logistical battles beh...

A film which has been on the Directors Notes radar since we caught it at the London Film Festival last October, Sarah speaks to Sandhya Suri, writer/director of the BAFTA nominated/ British Independent Film Awards winning crime thriller Santosh, about feeling compelled to step out of her documentary background for this gripping feature exploring the complexities between women in positions of power...

A film for all the misfits who have also misplaced their instruction manuals for life and a filmmaker who first appeared on the Directors Notes pocast back in 2012 with his short film at the time, we sit down for an interview with DN alum Karan Kandhari , writer/director of possibly the strangest film you’ll see this year ‘Sister Midnight’, to chat about following his characters’...

Defying expectations of being the longshot nominee as the lone genre piece competing for the 2025 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film by triumphantly taking home the Oscar last Sunday, ‘I’m Not a Robot’ is a delightfully entertaining blend of sci-fi, dark comedy, and existential drama that doesn’t go where you expect. DN sat down with writer /director Victoria War...

In this instalment of the Director’s Notes podcast, we explore the 18th BFI Future Film Festival , delving into its programme of electrifying moving shorts and speaking to the inspiring filmmakers behind them in the iconic BFI Southbank. Jesse catches up with Young Programmer Felix Farrow , who provides insight into the BFI Future Film Festival selection and programming process. We then speak to t...

Writer/Director Franz Böhm speaks to DN about capturing the all too real horrors of a young man’s experiences on the frontline of the Ukraine-Russia war who is forced to make a difficult decision in order to protect others in his true life inspired BAFTA winning short film ‘Rock Paper Scissors’. [ Watch/Read the full interview ] Please Note this interview was recorded before Rock...

Director/Editor Theo Panagopoulos sits down with DN to discuss his BAFTA nominated documentary short The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing for which he reclaims archival Scottish missionary footage from the 30s and 40s of his ancestral Palestine to question the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land. [ Watch/Read t...

Our first episode of 2025 sets the bar pretty high for the episodes to come this year. This week we’re joined by BAFTA film committee chair Anna Higgs who as well as discussing her route into the film industry and the innovative work she’s done in her roles at places like Film4 and NOWNESS, talks to us about BAFTA’s work to support and nurture talent within the film industry, the...

In our last episode of the Directors Notes podcast for 2024, we bring you Sarah’s chat with, at the time BIFA nominee and now, The Douglas Hickox Award winning director Christopher Andrews for his blistering debut feature Bring Them Down , which pits Christopher Abbott against Barry Keoghan in a tense thriller about two warring farming families set against the harsh landscape of rural west I...

We sit down with Nina Gantz the talented filmmaker behind this year’s BIFA Best British Short winner Wander to Wonder , a stop-motion tale following a trio of tiny performers from a beloved children’s television show as they struggle to navigate life after the untimely death of the show’s creator. Gantz takes Directors Notes inside the extraordinary craftsmanship of her film, which offers a...

A film which we’ve been endlessly quoting here at DN and that has already bagged a Sundance Audience Award and four BIFA wins (with 10 more nominations still up for grabs), Kneecap director Rich Peppiatt joins us for a chat about his bewilderment over the reactionary backlash to the film before it had even screened, how not coming from Ireland freed him to take shots at all sides and standing stro...

The story of a man-child, obsessed with toys, who finds himself possessed by a puppet, Eros V’s BIFA nominated, twice SXSW winning horror-comedy short ‘Meat Puppet’ was always going to turn heads. Directors Notes caught up with Eros to learn how a conversation with The Jim Henson Company inspired the short, the unusual challenges actors David Jonsson and Máiréad Tyers had to mast...

A film we enjoyed so much that we invited writer/director Sasha Nathwani to join us for a (second) deep dive interview about his Crystal Bear winning feature debut ‘Last Swim’, in which he explains why the vibrant yet nostalgic colour palette was intrinsic to his contemporary coming-of-age drama and how this specific London-set story captures a universal sense of youth relevant far bey...

The next in our series of director interviews from London Film Festival 2024, Sarah caught up with Holloway co-creators Sophie Compton & Daisy -May Hudson who picked up the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at LFF and was one of Sarah’s festival favourites. As you’ll hear in their chat, Holloway sees six incredibly brave, former prisoners re-enter the decaying space they were once in...

Never have I felt the idiom, never judge a book by its cover to be truer than in my experience with the 2024 London Film Festival Grierson Award Winner Mother Vera . Co-directed by Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson , within the opening scene of Mother Vera I was immediately struck by the discord between the type of documentary I was expecting and what unfolded onscreen. Set in a remote, cold and...