Stampede

"I didn't want to impose a story on Ghana from the outside. I wanted to find something real that already existed there and build from that."

Sydney-based director Isaac Brown and Genesis Owusu head to Accra's electrifying daredevil bike culture, blending raw street energy with mythic staging to create a rallying music video that documents a real community from the inside out. In our interview, Isaac explains what it means to document a real community rather than dress one.

Original Sin

"We talked a lot about the cinematography feeling like a chess game - precise movements, nothing wasted, each cut, each frame, a strategic proposition in this mythic Greek war between mother and son."

A Muslim mother and her drag queen son battle for the spotlight in Amrou Al-Kadhi's surreal short Original Sin, commissioned by WePresent. Amrou sits down with DN to unpack how the film's tightly choreographed visual language stages their domestic trauma funhouse standoff as something altogether more operatic.

Twenty Years of Directors Notes & the 2026 WeAreDN Awards. One day to go!

The night lands in London tomorrow, celebrating the filmmakers, films, festivals and DN community that we have proudly been part of for the past 20 years.

None of it happens without the generosity of our partners, so a huge thank you to Leuchtturm1917 for providing our beautiful bespoke awards, Hiike Independent—who you can find out more about below— the official supporters of our Best Comedy Short award, and to our BIFA / BAFTA qualifying festival friends Bolton Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival & Exit 6 Film Festival for providing one lucky filmmaker with a route to awards season qualification, along with full festival passes as part of the film Bingo prizes to be won on the night. 🤞

We’re down to our final handful of tickets for the evening, so run, don’t walk!

🗓️ Thursday, 7th May | ⏰ 7PM | 📍 Lanzarote Works

Hiike Independent exists because filmmakers and film festivals deserved better than what was out there. For too long, the platforms built to serve the independent film community were overcomplicated, overpriced, and designed without the filmmaker or the festival in mind. We built a submission and festival management platform from the ground up to give filmmakers a cleaner, more straightforward way to get their work in front of the right people, and to give festivals the infrastructure they need to run their entire selection process without the mess. We built this because the independent film community deserves tools that work as hard as they do, honest, reliable, and actually built for the people using them.

Squash

"I was incredibly nervous and scared of that version of the story, and cautious about how the lead character would come across. I knew, because I was scared, that this was the best version of the short to make."

Amassing over 650K views in the week since it premiered on DN’s YouTube channel, filmmaker Ruhi Radke’s empowering virginity-focused short Squash turns the awkwardness of a first time into something quietly radical: a woman losing her virginity to herself. No glamour, no tragedy—just shame, stubbornness, and a private smile alone in the bathroom.

Umrao Jaan

"The strength of the film becomes something to reckon with because of its nostalgia, the fact that it was made with a kind of depth and a timeless approach to art. Today, everything is in a hurry, and everything is divided too much between people. Nobody really penetrates deep enough into the creative thought."

45 years on from its initial release, filmmaker Muzaffar Ali joins DN's Nimi Raja to reflect on the organic, intentional craft behind his 19th-century courtesan bio-epic Umrao Jaan — which had its 4K restoration debut at the BFI IMAX as part of the 2026 edition of the UK Asian Film Festival — and makes the case for slowing down and committing to craft in an age of clickbait culture.