London Breeze Film Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary this month with what it calls its most ambitious programme to date including world, UK and London premieres, industry workshops, panels, masterclasses and immersive VR/AR/XR experiences in partnership with the Royal College of Art as well as screenings across London venues and online via Breeze Online.
Festival Coordinator Madeleine Casey said: “Our volunteer team has worked tirelessly over the past ten years to build a festival that champions emerging filmmakers, diverse voices and bold storytelling. This year’s themes (Resilience, Resistance, Remember, Reimagine, Community) reflect the times we live in, and the hope that film and creativity can reimagine our future.
Festival Founder & Executive Director Sam Cullis added: “Our tenth edition is a true milestone. The new ambassadors reflect the diversity, ambition and creativity that drive the festival forward, amplifying underrepresented voices and shaping our next chapter.”
The Irish World was there at the recent programme reveal event at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
That evening the festival also revealed its new ambassadors joining for the 2025 festival.
The new ambassadors are Louisa Connolly-Burnham (actor, writer, director; Sister Wives), Maeve Murphy (award-winning filmmaker Silent Grace), Alex Kayode-Kaye (BAFTA-nominated actor/director) and Sundra Oakley (actor/producer, Bob Marley: One Love).
They join existing ambassadors including Stanley Tucci, George Mackay, Will Poulter, Daniel Battsek and Vanessa Redgrave
Two new ambassadors Maeve Murphy and Louisa Connolly- Burnham have been featured in The Irish World before.
Maeve Murphy told The Irish World: “It’s fantastic. It’s a real honour and a privilege to be asked to do this.
“I had my short film St Pancras Sunrise show here last year and it was awarded an honourable mention.
“I’m delighted to be able to encourage new, emerging, bold, diverse, dynamic film makers.
“If that spirit doesn’t carry on, people don’t get encouraged, then nothing flows forward so we need culture constantly to be regenerated, refreshed.
“This festival is fantastic for that because it’s brilliantly curated by Madeleine but it also has very distinct and unique voices as well.
“It’s not bland in any way but very entertaining too.”
Louisa Connolly Burnham told The Irish World: “It’s amazing.
“I’ve never been an ambassador for a film festival before.
“I was here last year with my film, Sister Wives.
“We had the most amazing time, we saw incredible films so when I got the email asking, I was very, very flattered. I’m very excited.”
Sister Wives was a winner at last year’s festival.
“It’s really incredible (to be back).
“I’m a Londoner, I live in South London so it feels very special to be here in my home city celebrating short films and seeing who the next generation of filmmakers are going to be.
“I’ve just seen some of the trailers for this year’s programme and I am blown away. I’m so excited.”
On the inspiration for her prize-winning short Louisa said: “I saw a documentary in 2023 on Netflix called Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey which was about this community in Utah, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints.
“They’re basically extreme mormons.
“The men can have as many wives as they want and I decided to write a film about it.”
Sister Wives won numerous awards and was longlisted for Oscars, BAFTAs and British Independent Film Awards.
Has it exceeded all expectations?
“Yeah, it was beyond anything that I ever dreamed of.
“It’s always so wonderful to see people connect with a queer story, with a female led story.
“It’s been amazing.
“We’re shooting the feature next year.”
Is it still possible you will film in Ireland? “Ireland is still very much on the table but there’s a few various locations where we could shoot it and they all offer something different so we’ll have to see.
“I would love to shoot something in Ireland so we’ll see.”
London-based Irish film-maker Trevor Kaneswaren, whose short film Dress Smart is part of the programme, told The Irish World: “It’s fantastic.
“I’ve been coming here for a couple of years now, I’ve always been an admirer as an audience member and it’s great to actually have something in it now and be the person behind the camera and bring my first short to the festival for our London premiere.
“Dress Smart is a semi-autobiographical short that looks at mental health and suicide in lone parent households and the relationship between two men, a dad who is a widower and a son going through his own struggles as well.
“It’s predominantly the journey between the two men who are both struggling to unburden themselves because they’re both emotionally stunted and looking at how that can affect both men and how they can help each other get out of their struggles in the mire.
“Considering this is now suicide awareness month in September, I thought that was quite a lovely time to do the launch of this festival here London Breeze and have a movie in the festival that’s showcasing themes that need to be discussed in more detail.
“I suppose the way we unburden ourselves as society is to put it into an art form and be able to talk about that art form then in a way that doesn’t feel personal and more universal and therefore deal with issues that may feel too heavy to deal with by yourself.
“We’re looking forward to starting our festival run and hopefully we’ll get a couple of Irish festivals as well.
Katey Lee Carson, writer/ director of the short film The Secret Assistants, told The Irish World: “We are really, really happy to be here and especially because London Breeze has this huge support for independently made films.
“The Secret Assistants was so very independently made so we’re just happy to be here.
“It feels like a great fit.”
The Secret Assistants is a film that deals with prescient themes in the industry.
“It’s a short film that looks at power.
“It looks at hierarchy, takes a look at the set dynamics and the film industry but really the themes are very universal and kind of apply towards any industry where very powerful people have too much power perhaps and underneath them are an array of people trying to work up their way in the industry.
“I was assistant director for many, many years and almost every line of dialogue in The Secret Assistants comes from real life experience, not my own necessarily but from people around me, from stories I’ve heard, from things I’ve seen on set so it’s very much inspired by real life experience.
“The reason why we made this film was because we were all young women in the film industry coming up during #metoo.
“We would find ourselves as young women in the industry at dinner tables where people would say, ‘You should do more. You should speak out. If you see things, you should say something’.
“And we wanted to take a look at what actually a set dynamic looks like and show that to people and show the audience just how complex it is to really stand up in that kind of a situation and say something against everything that we’re seeing every day.
“It’s a very, very grey line.
“It’s not black and white.
“And I think what has happened is that they’ve somehow managed to put the onus on the victims to come forward and to do something or the people with no power to come forward and do something.
“This dynamic of putting it on the powerless to say something, rather than kind of the industry looking at itself and being like, ‘This person has a terrible reputation and has a track record of bad deeds’ and the higher ups in the industry taking them out, they really have put a lot of pressure on the younger people coming up to say something and it’s just too hard. It’s really hard.
“I think, as women, we kind of feel it’s not really our job to do this alone, there should be other people with us.
“It is incredibly complex to stand up and say something when you see something going wrong on set.
“It’s a very, very competitive industry.
“It’s a creative industry.
“Everybody wants to be in it.
“You have young people coming into the industry every day, and they just want to be film makers so it’s very hard to put the pressure on them and then say, ‘When you see someone misbehaving or behaving poorly..’
“It’s a complex dynamic. It’s not so easy and unless you have a lot of fame behind you, a lot of power behind you, it is very complex to stand up and say something.
“That’s what we wanted to explore.”
Although from South Africa Katey is proud of her Irish roots.
“I’m an Irish South African.
“My family is from Belfast and Dublin, both sides.
“I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, but we definitely kept those Irish roots very, very strong in our family.”
Katey concluded: “I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of the films.
“Thanks to London Breeze for putting The Secret Assistants in the festival and we look very much forward to screening here.”
London Breeze Film Festival runs 22- 26 October at Riverside Studios, Garden Cinema and online.
For more information, click here.
