BFI NETWORK Short Film Development Programme - 2022 Participants

Amy Rich is a writer from Bedfordshire. In 2018 she crowdfunded £5k to make her first short film about caring for a family member. In 2020, her short comedy lockdown film about home-schooling was optioned to Old Hall Films and is now being submitted to festivals. Also in 2020, Amy was part of The Network, run by Edinburgh TV Festival. During this time, she created two original children’s pilot scripts which have received positive feedback from industry professionals. Amy enjoys writing scripts that have warmth, hope and humour at their heart.

Andrea is a writer/director. In theatre, she has directed and produced work at National Theatre Studio, Barbican, London Coliseum, Young Vic, Gate Theatre, Arcola Theatre, Finborough Theatre, HighTide Festival, Southbank Centre, Lilian Baylis Studio and Hackney House. She has developed new plays at the National Theatre, Royal Court International Department and Old Vic: New Voices. She was the recipient of the National Theatre Leverhulme Emerging Directors Bursary. She received her MFA Directing from Columbia University School of the Arts.

Anushka Naanayakara is a stop motion director who explores emotion and stories through fabrics and textures. Her background in fine art and graphic design also influences her vibrant visual style.

Courteney is a writer/director interested in telling stories with a queer, working-class and East Asian angle. Last year, she wrote and directed her first short Capture which is set for festival submissions this year. Her next short film Longing is due to shoot summer of 2022.

Daniel is a screenwriter from Oxford. He was a finalist in the Golden Script and Euroscript 2021 competitions, a semi-finalist for the Best Script Award 2021, and received an honourable mention in the Screen Power Festival 2021. He is a graduate of the MA Creative Writing programme at Bath Spa University.

Daniel Turner (born in Nottingham) is a writer-director based in the South East. His work has been screened internationally at film festivals and art institutions and his most recent film Dve Místa is currently screening on NoBudge. Previously he has been commissioned by Channel 4 Random Acts creating the short documentary Millie.

Hermione is a filmmaker from Suffolk. She currently works in the camera department whilst making shorts films and music videos in her spare time.

Jack Lilleywhite is a filmmaker from a Romany Gypsy background, he has worked on projects such as I May Destroy You, The Batman, and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Jack is drawn to narratives that explore identity and social realism; tired of seeing pejorative on-screen portrayals of his own ethnicity, he brings a lens of authenticity to the Romany community in his upcoming short film. Through an original screenplay, he seeks to expose the devastating effect the PCSC bill has on minority cultures.

Lucie Rachel is an artist filmmaker exploring gender, sexuality and domesticity through personal subject matter. Lucie has directed award winning short films with the Scottish Documentary Institute, Glasgow Film, Channel 4 Random Acts and Art with Impact, screening internationally at over 80 festivals including EIFF, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, Iris Prize, and Five Films For Freedom by BFI Flare and British Council. Alongside filmmaking, Lucie works on the artistic programme team at Lighthouse and is film curator on the Queer the Pier project at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

Mina is a writer and director; she was invited to join the BBC Writersroom scheme in 2020/21 where she developed an original idea for television. She was also invited to join a mentorship scheme by CBBC called New Voices last year and has joined the writing team for a CBBC show and will write her first episode for broadcast television this year.

Jewish and Irish Writer-Directors Ruth Mestel and Charis McRoberts are a collaborative creative partnership. Their ethos is to create stories for film exploring modern socio-political issues. Their first co-directed short, September October November, was recently shortlisted at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival (48 Hour Film Challenge).

Ryushi Lindsay is a British-Japanese filmmaker working across fiction and non-fiction. His 2020 short Idol has just completed its festival run, and his 2019 documentary on Japanese high-school baseball, Kokutai, is currently streaming on MUBI. He has recently finished a new documentary short, and is in post on his latest fiction project, Silk & Rushes, which was funded by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs’ ‘Arts for the Future’ grant.