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 three filmmakers who wowed us with their outstanding works, beginning with Lada Kopytova, who discusses finding her film Blueprint in the edit, followed by a brief interview with Grac Talbot about their Wizard of Oz inspired, mixed-media film We’re Not in Essex Anymore. We then close out with our chat with Dylan Scott, director of A Few More Minutes, Please, an incredibly funny and powerful short film about social anxiety.

The entire selection of films are available on the BFI’s YouTube channel until the 6th March.

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 Paper Scissors’ BAFTA win.

Check out all of our BAFTA 2025 interviews

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 the full interview]

Check out all of our BAFTA 2025 interviews

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 process of how films make it to BAFTA nomination, how the voting system works and also shares her advice for building a sustainable film career.
[Watch/Read the full interview]

Links
Directors Notes BAFTA interviews
Anna Higgs’ website
BAFTA Awards
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Standing on the Shoulders podcast

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 Ireland.
[Watch/Read the full interview]

Check out all of our BIFA 2024 interviews

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 unique and poignant exploration of loss, blending humour and sadness in perfect harmony.
[Watch/Read the full interview]

Check out all of our BIFA 2024 interviews

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 strong against conflicting notes from funders in order to not sacrifice the integrity of his blisteringly entertaining film.
[Watch/Read the full interview]

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 master for their roles and the lo-fi techniques behind the magic trick of bringing a puppet to life on a shoestring budget.
[Watch/Read the full interview]

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 beyond the borders of England’s capital.

Links
Check out all of our BIFA conversations

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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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 incarcerated in to reclaim their narratives and give voice to the voiceless women still behind bars, while also prompting us as viewers to examine the purpose of our broken penal system.

Head to Directors Notes for more filmmaker interviews and to watch our daily selection of new short films. If you’d like your film featured on DN, submit it here. If you’re not already, you should definitely subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast.
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