LONGLIST ANNOUNCED:
BIFA’s RAINDANCE DISCOVERY AWARD 2021
Britain’s biggest independent film festival, Raindance is considered a place to discover the work of passionate and pioneering new filmmakers. Raindance further
champions new filmmakers with the Raindance Discovery Award at the annual BIFAs (British Independent Film Awards), the awards ceremony founded by Raindance in 1998. This award highlights innovation, uniqueness of vision, maverick filmmaking and risk-taking, with a budget under £500k and no, or very limited, theatrical distribution deals in place.
This year’s Raindance Discovery Award longlist comprises 10 standout films. Unusually, documentaries lead the selection, with six longlisted docs covering topics as diverse as feminist punk, skateboarding Olympians, and Britain’s migrant crisis. The four longlisted features tell compelling and contemporary stories.
“After a year when our cinemas have mostly been closed to us, the Raindance Discovery Award longlist captures all that is great and inspiring about independent cinema,” says Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance and BIFA. “Raindance will always be a place to discover and be discovered, and we are thrilled to champion these fresh, powerful and pioneering films.”
The longlist of documentaries include HOSTILE, the directorial debut of Sonita Gale, due to have its World Premiere tonight (Fri 29 Oct) at the 29th Raindance Film Festival. It documents the migrants that Britain once relied on, but many now face being expelled. BANK JOB follows a community who come together to make their own currency and open a bank, examining how money and debt is created in our economy. The daughter of punk icon and X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene takes a journey through her mother’s archives following her death, resulting in the intimate documentary POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ, with contributors including Jonathan Ross, Don Letts, Thurston Moore, Vivienne Westwood and Neneh Cherry. REBEL DYKES documents the explosion that happened when punk met feminism, told through the lives of a gang of lesbians in London in the 1980s. A winner at UK Asian Film Festival and WRPN Woman’s International Film Festival, I AM BELMAYA sees an educated young Dalit woman in Nepal, silenced and subjugated all her life, take up a movie camera to tell her story – an inspirational and moving tale of rebellion, courage and hope. Telling the story of skateboarding in the UK, from the 1970s to the present day, BOARDERS follows a group of British skateboarders on their journey towards Tokyo 2020, where skateboarding made its debut as an Olympic sport.
Longlisted for BIFA’s Raindance Discovery Award in 2020 for Justine, director Jamie Patterson is longlisted again in 2021 for THE KINDRED. Starring Samantha Bond, James Cosmo and Patrick Bergin, it’s the tale of a woman suffering from amnesia who pieces together the events that led to her father’s suicide, only to be haunted by the ghosts of children that she begins to suspect were murdered by him. BIFA Best Actor nominee Alec Secareanu (in 2017 for God’s Own Country) stars in THE BIKE THIEF as a delivery driver who must find his stolen moped before he loses everything else, co-starring BAFTA award winning Anamaria Marinca. BBC Broadcast and BAFTA (Wales) nominated filmmaker Ryan
Andrew Hooper makes his feature debut with THE TOLL, a darkly-comic thriller about a lone toll booth operator with a past that is fast catching up with him. The longlist also includes ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME, telling the story of a man reunited with college friends for a birthday weekend, only to find each one of them slowly turn against him.
FULL LONGLIST:
ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME – Andrew Gaynord, Tom Palmer, Tom Stourton
BANK JOB – Daniel Edelstyn, Hilary Powell, Christopher Hird
BOARDERS – Annika Ranin, Sean Fee, Jasmin Morrison
HOSTILE – Sonita Gale
I AM BELMAYA – Sue Carpenter, Christopher Hird
POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ – Paul Sng, Celeste Bell, Zoë Howe, Rebecca Mark-
Lawson, Matthew Silverman, Daria Nitsche
REBEL DYKES – Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams, Siobhan Fahey
THE BIKE THIEF – Matt Chambers, PK Fellowes, Sophia Gibber, Lene Bausager
THE KINDRED – Jamie Patterson, Christian J. Hearn, Tracy Jarvis, Steve Jarvis
THE TOLL – Ryan Andrew Hooper, Matt Redd, Mark Hopkins
Previous recipients include Ben Wheatley, receiving an early accolade for his first feature Down Terrace. BIFA’s Raindance Discovery Award was presented in 2020 to Eva Riley’s Perfect 10, the spirited coming-of-age story set in the world of competitive gymnastics. The crew of Perfect 10 will take part in an industry panel event hosted by BIFA this evening during the 29th Raindance Film Festival (27 October – 6 November), discussing how winning this award in 2020 has impacted their work.
The final list of 5 nominations will be announced on Wednesday 3 November, winner announcement at the awards ceremony on Sunday 5 December.
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For more information, please contact
Raindance: Stuart Haggas: press@raindance.co.uk
BIFA: Amber Muotto bifa@ampr.com
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EDITORS NOTES:
Raindance Film Festival is the largest independent film festival in the UK and it has been recognised by Variety as “one of the world’s top 50 unmissable film festivals”. Raindance showcases the boldest, freshest content from British and international filmmakers. Industry and the public attend cutting-edge panels, talks and workshops. Raindance is a qualifying festival for Oscars®, BAFTA and BIFA. www.raindance.org/festival/
Raindance is dedicated to fostering and promoting independent film around the world. Founded in 1992, it combines the Raindance Film Festival, film training courses, and Raindance Higher Education. Training courses are at the heart of the Raindance structure, aiming to give individuals the tools to start shooting their film, and covering screenwriting, production, directing, and virtual reality. Moreover, Raindance has developed three fully accredited Higher Education Film Programmes, becoming the only major film festival in the world to offer higher education. www.raindance.org
About BIFA: The British Independent Film Awards highlight and celebrate the best independent British film and filmmakers and the best future prospects. We shine a light on and provide access to the best British independent film audiences have and haven’t heard of. Nominees and winners are selected by the industry – every eligible film is watched and discussed, making BIFA the only truly credible source for the best in British independent film. Proud patrons of the British Independent Film Awards are Mike Figgis, Tom Hollander, Adrian Lester, Ken Loach, Ewan McGregor, Helen Mirren, Samantha Morton, James Nesbitt, Michael Sheen, Trudie Styler, Tilda Swinton, Meera Syal, David Thewlis, Ray Winstone and Michael Winterbottom.
For further information, visit www.bifa.film
Raindance promotes and supports independent filmmaking and filmmakers.
From new and emerging to industry pros, Raindance connects, trains, supports, and promotes visual storytellers through every step of their career.
The Raindance Film Festival runs each Summer in London’s Leicester Square.
Raindance has been delivering film training since 1992. A wide range of Open Classes to a 2 year HND Level 5 BTEC in Moving Images to a Postgraduate Film Degree are delivered to students on five continents, both in person and online.
