As a self-described ‘champion of maverick filmmaking on a limited budget’, Raindance Film Festival looks for fresh perspectives for each edition. Over 75% of the features in this year’s festival are from first-time directors, with a broad spectrum of experiences.
Caroline Sharp, director of documentary Sisters Interrupted, has a neuroscience degree and works at a company investing in science businesses. When she met UK DJ Chelsea Leyland at a music festival in 2017, Sharp was intrigued by the fact that both Chelsea and her sister Tamsin Leyland experience epilepsy. The sisters’ relationship, and their battle for life-saving treatment, forms the basis of Sisters Interrupted, which was picked up for global distribution by Fremantle in September.
The filmmakers hope Raindance will provide a platform for audiences who may know little of epilepsy to encounter the condition in a new light. “It’s always been about making people feel and understand, using film as a technique,” says Sharp. “We’re an indie film – we don’t have a big budget to throw into PR; and we’re all doing other things as well.”
The festival is also supporting those already in the industry who have branched out to new roles.
Actor Christian Cooke is known for on-screen roles as the lead in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s Cemetery Junction; and series including National Geographic’s Barkskins. After directing 2017’s Bifa-longlisted short Edith, Cooke has made first feature Embers, about a sexual surrogate employed to help a psychiatric patient overcome intimacy issues, in which he also stars with Ruth Bradley. It is produced by Sara Huxley and April Kelley for Mini Productions with Arthur Landon for Lorton Entertainment.
“Raindance is one of the last bastions of true independent festival programming,” suggests Cooke.
The festival aims to showcase emerging talents from around the UK. Cooke hails from Yorkshire while fellow debut director, Johnny Barrington, lived as a young man on an island in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. Barrington returned to the archipelago to shoot Silent Roar, about a young surfer dealing with the grief of his father’s death. The film opened Edinburgh International Film Festival in August and is now screening at Raindance in another homecoming-of-sorts for Barrington. The director worked as a runner at the festival in one of his first film jobs in 2003, while “sleeping on couches and smelling of carpet”.
“I love the maverick side to Raindance,” says Barrington.”I feel like I’ve completed a circle.” BBC Film, BFI and Screen Scotland all backed Silent Roar, which stars Louis McCartney and Ella Lily Hyland.
With her documentary Long Distance Swimmer: Sara Mardini, Charly Wai Feldman is making the leap from producer to director, having made TV news documentaries for a decade. “I was experiencing a creative burnout; I wanted to take things in a different direction,” says Feldman, who is based between the UK and India. On hearing of Syrian refugee Sara Mardini’s arrest by Greek authorities on spying charges in 2018, Feldman felt compelled to share her story. “We didn’t know what to do; but we knew how to make films.”
After meeting Mardini, Feldman realised her experience would be best told in a more personal format . “I realised this is not something I want to make into a current affairs film,” says Feldman, who instead chose “this more independent path… to give ourselves the creative freedom to explore a different way of telling this story.” The film is produced by Feldman’s UK company Safe Passage Films, with the majority of financing from Germany’s MOIN Film Fund and the Malik Bendjelloul Memorial Fund.
Another first-time filmmaker who appreciates the opportunities offered by the festival is Kit Vincent who, having worked as a runner, was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour in his early 20s. He documented the effect of this news upon his friends and family and turned the footage into Red Herring, which has been long-listed in three categories at this year’s Bifas.
“My film is not necessarily about the most joyous years in my life; [but] making a film about it has turned it into something beautiful. To show it with other debut filmmakers is a special experience – we can all share that,” said Vincent.
The Raindance Film Festival runs from October 25 to November 4 in London.
