BIFA Longlist Tag Archive

Live Action

Victor Nauwynck Pumps Primal Desire Into Marital Decay in His Transgressive & Visually Arresting Short ‘The Bull’

Victor Nauwynck discusses how pivoting from a planned, restrained visual style to reactive handheld cinematography unlocked his film's animalistic crescendo.

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Live Action

Imran Perrettas ‘Ish’ Captures the Seismic Heartbreak of a Childhood Friendship Fracturing Under External Pressures

Imran Perretta details using black & white to recast Luton as a timeless landscape in his story of a friendship torn apart by a racially profiled police

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Awards

Exclusive First Look at the BIFA 2025 Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) Longlist

In partnership with BIFA, Directors Notes brings you a first look at the 2025 longlist for The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director).

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Live Action

Tensions Boil Over as Preconceptions Shatter Amid the Hectic Heat of a Takeaway in Luís Hindman’s ‘MAGID / ZAFAR’

Luís Hindman breaks down his maximalist approach of building three distinct spaces within a busy British Pakistani takeaway for his LFF premiering short.

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Documentary

Forged Over 20 years Victoria Mapplebeck’s ‘Motherboard’ Presents the Raw, Unvarnished Reality of Solo Motherhood

Self-shot over two decades, Victoria Mapplebeck details the epic scale of her feature doc which dispels the unrealistic expectations we have about motherhood.

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Live Action

Daisy-May Hudson’s ‘Lollipop’ Is a Heartbreaking Portrait of Maternal Resilience and Devastating Systemic Failure

Daisy-May Hudson opens up about turning pain into power in her feature where a young woman struggles against a broken system to regain custody of her kids.

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Podcasts

Sandhya Suri on Crafting a Nuanced Crime Thriller About Violence Against Women in ‘Santosh’

Sandhya Suri discusses her decade-long journey to bring Santosh to life, blending crime thriller tension with a searing critique of gendered violence in India.

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Awards, Live Action

A Father’s Loneliness Erupts Corporeally In Matty Crawford’s SXSW Winning BAFTA Body Horror ‘Stomach Bug’

Matty Crawford chats to DN about building the horror fuelled landscape of his psychological drama about a lonely parent suffering from empty nest syndrome.

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Awards, Documentary

Theo Panagopoulos Questions the Role of Image Making in Archival BAFTA Doc ‘The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing’

Theo Panagopoulos considers how images can both document the truth and perpetuate trauma when capturing humanity's fraught cyclical history.

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Live Action

Sasha Nathwani’s ‘Last Swim’ Envelops Us in the Nostalgic Ebullience of One Last Carefree Day

Sasha Nathwani reveals the subtle progression of colour he adopted to emulate the universal nostalgia of a day of fun and freedom amongst teenage friends.

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Documentary, Film Festival

Sophie Compton & Daisy-May Hudson’s ‘Holloway’ Interrogates the Root Causes and Lasting Trauma of Incarceration

Sophie Compton & Daisy-May Hudson extol the benefits of the co-created trauma-informed filmmaking model underpinning their LFF award winning documentary.

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Documentary, Film Festival, Podcasts

A Nun Untangles the Threads of Her Sense of Self in Cécile Embleton & Alys Tomlinson’s ‘Mother Vera’

Cécile Embleton & Alys Tomlinson speak to us about the multi-year journey of their Grierson Award winning doc about a young nun facing deep inner conflict.

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