Lighting Up the Darkness

Johannes Moe unpacks the dark fuelled nightmare that results from the blurred boundaries between psychiatrist and patient in Lighting up the Darkness (Lyset i mørket), his tragic thriller short where the complex reality of mental illness proceeds down an unpredictable and dangerous path.

Meet the 2025 WeAreDN Awards Jury

Currently deliberating this year’s winning films, we’re honoured to welcome them as our judging panel:

Dave Taylor Matthews: Executive Director of Encounters Film Festival, leading its 30th edition in 2025. Dave has over a decade of film curation expertise and in his role at Eventive provides solutions for film festivals worldwide. With an MA in Curating from UWE/Watershed, he is a passionate champion of social cinema, shared viewing experiences, and the transformative power of film as a medium for community building and cultural exchange.

John Mark Fitzpatrick: John is an award-winning Irish writer and director. He has been nominated for both a BAFTA and BIFA, and created celebrated shorts including Outdoors (writer/director, Winner: Best Drama Prague Film Awards 2024, Best Drama & Best British Short, 2024 WeAreDN Awards) and Wren Boys (writer, BIFA Nominated 2017, BAFTA Nominated 2018, Sundance 2018).

Joshua Trigg: Joshua is a Welsh filmmaker whose debut feature Satu - Year of the Rabbit earned international acclaim for its poignant exploration of identity and transformation. The film was nominated for the BIFA Raindance Maverick Award, earned a UNESCO Gandhi Peace Prize nomination at India IFF and also won Best Film at the 2024 Nara International Film Festival.

🏆 Join us in London on 1st May for the winners’ screening + celebration.

Editorial

Riccardo Fusetti returns to DN to walk us through the construction of the multi-format production approach he took for Editorial, his fashion lifestyle short starring Victoria Valcheva, which uses AI imagery to subvert our expectations of a model's seemingly carefree existence.

Christopher at Sea

A short which first came to our attention as a nominee for the 2023 British Independent Film Awards and has now arrived online under Vimeo’s auspicious Staff Pick Premiere banner, we revisit our chat with filmmaker Tom C J Brown about the melodramatic realist tone he strived to achieve with his painterly animated story of a young man on a transatlantic voyage who has a transformational moonlit encounter with one of the ships engineers.

Directors Notes & Conero Film + ADV Partnership

⚡ Directors Notes is delighted to announce our official media partnership for the 2025 edition of Conero Film + ADV.

CFA is a festival and a creative retreat dedicated to professionals from the advertising and film industries. Taking place from the 4th - 7th of September, this innovative and forward-thinking festival welcomes agencies, production companies, brands, and directors to the heart of the stunning Conero Natural Park in Italy for a weekend packed with talks, screenings, networking and exploring the breathtaking natural beauty of the area.

As part of the collaboration, DN will be offering an exclusive editorial interview with the winner of CFA's Best Independent Short. Head to the Conero Film + ADV website for full details and to submit ahead of the Regular Deadline on the 21st of May.

Satu - Year of the Rabbit

Self-funded with a minuscule budget of just £150,000 and shot on 16mm in Laos with non-actors and a skeleton crew who had to contend with snakes, poisoned well water and a mid-production camera break down due to the heat, writer/director (and WeAreDN Awards jury member) Joshua Trigg’s feature debut is pretty much the epitome of independent filmmaking. With Satu about to finish up its UK cinema tour, we share our chat with Josh on the podcast this week, where we discuss the determined pursuit of a creative calling which is echoed both on screen and in the production of the film itself.