The Film Festival Experience

I feel privileged to have had my film The Porous Body shown as part of the Official Selection at Two Short Nights 2026. It's really thrilling (as well as totally overwhelming) to see your film on the big screen and to hear it relayed through a cinema sound system. It was also very instructive.  I've spent the weekend doing a few tweaks: correcting tiny mistakes that were suddenly evident in this new setting.

As an artist more used revealing my new work in gallery spaces, it felt incredible to have a room full of strangers sit quietly in the dark and give my film their full attention. By contrast, a gallery private view is mostly full of people standing around drinking wine and gossiping.

But here's the thing I have to accept about film festivals. My films may or may not find complementary company. The Porous Body was shown as part of a programme called 'Something Feels Off', which focused on horror, suspense and the uncanny. As soon as I saw the programme I knew that my low-budget, low-key, research-driven film was going to be swamped. The other films (all of them well-resourced dramas) were great but they were of a very different genre. I was proud of the integrity and simplicity of my work, but it simply didn't fit.

(By contrast, the film I made with Frankie Williams and Tim King as part of the Two Short Nights 48-Hour Film Challenge benefited enormously from being screened alongside similarly make-shift, chaotic works in an atmosphere of generosity and hilarity.)

This isn't a criticism of the programming as I understand how hard it is to fit everything together for a festival. There's no perfect way in such a crammed schedule to give each film the space it deserves. But it is something I need to consider as I continue to make submissions to different film festivals.