The rising stars of British Cinema
UK’s STUDENT FILMS
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Weronika Trzpis
“I’m Fine” is a very personal story about dealing with depression, anxiety and the never ending healing journey. It is about every day fights to keep oneself above metaphorical water, to reach mental stability. Nowadays a lot of individuals struggle with mental health issues and I find it crucial to talk about this matter to fight stigma around the subject. To make people feel less alone with their battles. Through a series of visual metaphors I aim to explain depression and anxiety symptoms to people who never experienced such issues and help those who struggle to feel seen. Anyone and everyone can at some point in their life deal with mental health issues.
Martin Girardi
“Maleth, Meaning Shelter” is a film about mutual inextricability, about escalated righteousness, and about the birds that witness all of it from above. It was made as a thesis for UWE Bristol’s MA program in wildlife filmmaking—affiliated with the BBC’s NHU—but focuses on humans as much as wildlife. In searching for where and how cultural friction leads to capitulation, it’s also an ethnographic conservation film, spotlighting a real, contemporary environmental and political issue in the Mediterranean. While the specifics are limited to the context of threatened migratory birds over Malta, the opposing circumstances in which people feel they demonstrate their love for them, and the localized social weight of hunting as a long-established peculiarity attached to living on the island, I think the documentary short’s contents speak immediately and universally to the necessity of compromise, as well the practical difficulties that exist in its realization as caused by tradition neglecting an urgency in addressing biodiversity loss (in addition to showcasing the rhetorical dangers of disregarding the potent influence of such valued practices outright).
Pierluigi Campa
“Treadmill” explores universal issues of workplace toxicity, power abuse, and personal transformation, which resonate globally. Atlas, the protagonist, mirrors his tyrannical manager, Harvey, illustrating how unchecked power can corrupt even the most well-intentioned individuals. This message transcends borders as abusive work environments and power imbalances exist everywhere. Addressing these issues is a collective responsibility. By fostering respect, empathy, and fairness in all workplaces, we can ensure a safer, more secure, and equitable future for all, no matter what our backgrounds are.
Danyana Driver
Seashore was heavily inspired by my own personal experience with being in a past queer relationship and ultimately dealing with the loss of that relationship but also finding the beauty and appreciation of having it happen. One of my main goals with Seashore was I wanted to create a queer storyline that wasn’t rooted entirely in sexuality and have it be focused on simply a relationship between two people. I specifically focused on a queer relationship breaking down and avoid typical cliché reasons for the relationship ending such as having one character leaving due to shame or having society be against their relationship. Having these themes within a queer relationship and having them not work out in the end, but the reasoning coming from internal character flaws instead of outside factors adds a new depth into the relationship as well as subverting cliché tropes within queer media. I wanted to shine a new light onto the ‘break up’ genre of romance and normalise having queer love and stories on our screen which I feel is something that the film industry is still struggling to do. The character of Marina is very loosely inspired by me. Marina is the main character of the story despite the main plot being centred on both her and Sylvia’s relationship and it’s her journey that I wanted to focus on and I hope that there’s a Marina out there who may be struggling with the end of their relationship and I want them to know that it’s okay and not all things that end has to be looked back with sadness.