At the 2025 Sunrise Film Festival, the East Anglia on Film screening offers a compelling showcase of regional voices, cinematic perspectives, and deeply personal storytelling.
As an official sponsor of this year’s festival, Mode Insurance is proud to support a celebration that honours the creative spirit of independent filmmaking. This category reflects both the unique character of the East and the universal emotions that bind us all.
One such film, Shooting, Still Life by Alexander Velody, draws viewers into the quiet decay of a semi-abandoned French cottage. A photographer, seeking inspiration, finds more than just subject matter, she discovers the stories we impose upon forgotten places. Velody’s collaborative approach with a team of emerging filmmakers lends the film an organic quality.
As he notes:
“Nature knows no such word as ‘decay’, it is a human lens through which we view change.”
His film gently urges us to reconsider how we relate to stillness, impermanence, and the spaces we leave behind.
In Father’s Day, writer-director Sam Lambert explores the quiet weight of emotional resilience. Through the lens of a seaside visit between a father and son, the film questions why adults often feel compelled to shield children from vulnerability:
“Emotional weakness in front of your children isn’t something to be feared,” Lambert explains. “It should be welcomed.”
A personal memory inspired the story, but its message; is about the humanity of parents and the strength in emotional honesty feels universal.
Animator Sarah Beeby presents Gardening, an introspective and visually inventive short that delves into the aftermath of sexual assault. Set in a symbolic garden of the mind, the film balances hope with emotional truth.
“Gardening is an optimistic film about healing,”
Beeby says,
“but it does not avoid the difficult truth about trauma.”
Drawing from her own experiences, she uses bright visuals, absurdist humour, and Jungian psychology to illuminate the complex path to recovery. At its core, the film explores restorative justice, not as an ideal, but as a lived experience of transformation.
In Merman, filmmaker Madeleine Wynn turns to myth to explore themes of prejudice and belonging. Returning from humanitarian work, Mari is haunted by both what she has witnessed and what her home community represents.
The legend of the Merman becomes a mirror through which she confronts exclusion and the ethics of Western comfort.
Wynn describes the piece as a
“simple story of doing what we can with what we have, where we are.”
Made in collaboration with the local community, the film gently asks: what does it mean to truly see and accept the ‘other’?
Also featured is Buffing the Walking Men, a quietly poetic short observing a cleaner’s meticulous work on Lowestoft’s bronze beach sculptures.
Though wordless and brief, it reflects on care, routine, and the unnoticed beauty in everyday labour.
In Dial, director Josh Trett invites us into a psychological space where grief, guilt, and memory intertwine.
The story follows Dani, a caregiver whose world is upended by the sudden and mysterious death of her mother. What begins as a tragic loss quickly slips into the eerie, as Dani becomes haunted by persistent phone calls and unspoken truths.
“We wanted to provoke genuine emotion,”
says Josh, who co-wrote the film with his brother Matty.
Inspired by the memory of their late grandmother, Dial balances emotional depth with suspense, creating a story that resonates beyond its genre roots.
It is both an exploration of loss and a meditation on what lingers after.
Together, these films from East Anglia embody what the Sunrise Film Festival stands for: introspection, experimentation, and connection.
Sunrise Film Festival 2025 – Best British Short Film Nominees sponsored by Mode Insurance
Mode Insurance is honoured to support this space where meaningful stories are told and heard.
