A background in documentary has inspired Not Drowning, a feature Isla Badenoch is developing with backing from the BFI. The story is about a woman recovering from ill health who is prescribed swimming lessons by her doctor, and through them meets people who help her reconnect to the world.

Badenoch, who got her industry start working at Sheffield DocFest, wants it to be “a fiction that has an authentic community”, mixing actors and non-actors in a similar mode to Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. The filmmaker is finishing draft scripts and devising the main character alongside 2014 Star of Tomorrow Maisie Williams, who will produce alongside Lowri Roberts for Rapt.

Badenoch has a second project in the works: Whisperer, about a neurodiverse teenager whose relationship with horses helps her navigate growing up. The film is inspired by two real-life people: a girl about whom Badenoch made a short documentary of the same name; and a family friend from her past who helped her realise that “growing up doesn’t have to mean losing your imagination or curiosity”.

Badenoch is writing a treatment and hopes to have a script by the end of the year; Williams and Roberts will produce it too. “[I am] interested in people who see the world differently,” says Badenoch of the neuro­diversity theme. “We’re shifting personalities throughout our lives.”

Having grown up in rural communities around the UK before studying English literature at the University of Sheffield, Badenoch’s wish to direct was cemented while working as an assistant to director James Kent on 2014’s Testament Of Youth. “[I realised] this is like playing, formalised in filmmaking,” she says.

After an MA in visual culture and identity from Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, she made documentary shorts including 2021’s The Elvermen, about a community of men who gather to capture the vanishing elver eels. “I want to make work that’s timeless,” says Badenoch. “The Elvermen has preserved something that no longer exists, in a way that keeps its magic alive too.”

Contact: Isla Badenoch

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