Creating a Scene: BBC Introducing Arts

Actor, writer and producer Chizzy Akudolu presents a collection of dramatic short films from the best of new British film-makers. Reflecting modern Britain, subjects range from speed dating, the climate emergency and school friendships to spotting UFOs. Aisle 17; Swiped; Muriid; A Conversation with My Enemy; Money Up; Blue Corridor 15; Desert Town Landings; Pub Kid; Cardiff, I Love You; Dinah; This Camera Is Broken

Marcelo's Phantom

Marcelo's interest in writing becomes an unstoppable obsession once he meets a strange man on the bus.

Broken Sky

Gerardo is deeply in love with longtime lover Jonas. When Jonas falls for a stranger he met at a local nightclub, heartbroken Gerardo soon seeks solace in the arms of Sergio. Despite other interests, Gerardo and Jonas can't bring themselves to end it.

Bodyshop

A ghost soldier bids farewell to his mother then possesses bodies worldwide to meddle in unfaithful relationships in Taiwan, Japan, Spain and Thailand. In Hong Kong he encounters his soulmate amid protests and they take refuge in a garage.

Apostles

A dying scholar gathers 12 young men at his remote manor to explore death through philosophy, ritual, and transgressive acts—blurring the line between thought and obsession.

When Everything Was Blue

A heartfelt short narrative film that follows a family as they navigate the emotional and physical toll of a father's 9/11-related illness, all captured through the intimate lens of a home video camera.

A Menina que Nunca Viu o Mar

Iara, a girl who is about to come of age, dreams of seeing the ocean, but lives in Rio Grande do Norte's countryside with her mother, a woman who's dreams were swallowed by the waves and who fears of losing her daughter.

Puedo Explicarlo

Prayers for Bobby

Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.

When Robert Met Judith

Robert, an elderly man in a nursing home, drifts through a quiet routine until fellow resident Judith reaches out with warmth and persistence.

Liberated Don Quixote

Russian stop motion animation depicting the court of the Duke and Duchess as they mock and abuse the titular hero.

Fujimi Block No. 2 Symphony Orchestra

High school music teacher, Morimura Yuuki, is the concert master and first violinist of the amateur orchestra, Fujimi Orchestra. Surprisingly, a young conductor named Tonoin Kei (known as a musical genius) joins this small orchestra to conduct. Even though Tonoin is a strict conductor, all the members adore him for the notable improvements in their performances and soon Yuuki feels his efforts for the orchestra have been fruitless. Yuuki soon comes to the conclusion that his crush of 3 years likes Tonoin, and he decides to give up on her and leave the orchestra. Tonoin refuses to let him quit, confessing that he loves Yuuki, which reveals that he's gay. Tonoin's love confession confuses Yuuki and it leads to a very horrible misunderstanding.

Julián (Transmutación)

Julián, a 10-year-old boy, is going through a stage of change in which he cannot find peace with his surroundings. In a dream stage, a beetle becomes recurrent in his dreams.

We Are Faheem & Karun

Karun, a young security officer from South India, is stationed in Gurez, a remote village in Kashmir. One day, a charming man named Faheem comes to the check post and meets Karun. This marks the beginning of a romance, which, from the outset, is doomed – Faheem, bound by the societal taboos surrounding homosexuality in the context of his religion, cannot live openly, while Karun, due to the constraints of his profession, must also hide his true self. The film explores the intersection of love, identity, and repression in a region steeped in conflict.

Vogel, flieg!

Adina lives in Germany with her father and little brother after fleeing Afghanistan. War trauma and uncertainty about her mother's fate are constant companions in the family. Adina's need to dance her worries away is countered by her father's strict rules.

Pê

Pê, a man with terminal cancer, wanders through his city, Lisbon. Throughout the day, he is confronted with a reality unaware of his suffering while he prepares his imminent death by writing a farewell letter to his daughter. When emptying her father’s house, the daughter discovers the letter. It is the beginning of a new encounter.

Crash!

A surreal, moody short about the fetishisation of automobiles and auto accidents.

Blitz

An elite college athlete contemplates taking Adderall as his last chance to pass a critical exam despite previously failed drug tests.

What to Film...

After spending a few months in quarantine, a young filmmaker struggles to find inspiration.

Double Lover

Chloé, a fragile young woman, falls in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul. A few months later she moves in with him, but soon discovers that her lover is concealing a part of his identity.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

A visiting city reporter's assignment suddenly revolves around the murder trial of a local millionaire, whom he befriends.

Viva

When his estranged father returns, a hairdresser is forced to quit performing at the local drag club.

Martin (Hache)

After having a nearly fatal drug overdose, 19-year-old Argentine Martin is sent to Madrid, where his film director father lives with his new, younger lover, Alicia, and his bisexual actor friend, Dante.

My Brother the Devil

Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.

The Boys in the Band

At a birthday party in 1968 New York, a surprise guest and a drunken game leave seven gay friends reckoning with unspoken feelings and buried truths.

Just Charlie

Football star Charlie has the world at her feet. With a top club desperate to sign her, her future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager sees only a nightmare. Raised as a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to live up to her father's expectations and shedding this ill fitting skin.

August

August tells the story of two former lovers, Troy and Jonathan, who reunite after a long ago painful breakup. After spending several years in Spain, Troy returns to Los Angeles and decides to phone Jonathan and meet for coffee. A seemingly innocent rendezvous turns into an attempt to revive passions past. Only this time it's not that simple as Jonathan has a new beau, Raul, and is trying to make the right decision a second time around.

Pariah

A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.

Memories of a Teenager

After the suicide of his best friend and the fire of a local dance called Cromañón, including recitals, illegal parties in an abandoned warehouse and high school, a year passes by in the life of Zabo who writes everything he feels and lives in his blog, "Memories of a teenager".

This Is Not Berlin

Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn't fit in anywhere, not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground LGBTQ nightlife scene: punk, sexual liberty and drugs.

Any Day Now

In the late 1970s, when a mentally handicapped teenager is abandoned, a gay couple takes him in and becomes the family he's never had. But once the unconventional living arrangement is discovered by authorities, the men must fight the legal system to adopt the child.

Pimp

An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.

Pretty Boy

Sean is taken to a motel and is given a prostitute for his 18th birthday by his father. He must sleep with her to "fix" his questionable homosexuality. "Pretty Boy" is a coming of age story of a young bullied teen, Sean, struggling with his sexuality and the hardships of high school. After his father finds some questionable magazines in his room, this devout Christian will go to any lengths to get his son to find the light and "perform" the way a man should. Sean is introduced to Katie, a prostitute that understands the stigmas of modern society and helps him see the true light that is within him.

Streeters

Authentic and committed, moving and stormy drama of street kids from Mexico City. Wonderful adaptation of successful play about street kids who have more trouble with corrupt cops, than with dirty and heavy work.

Flow

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

Babylon

Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.

Welcome to the Rileys

Years after their teenage daughter’s death, Lois and Doug Riley, an upstanding Indiana couple, are frozen by estranging grief. Doug escapes to New Orleans on a business trip. Compelled by urgencies he doesn’t understand, he insinuates himself into the life of an underage hooker, becoming her platonic guardian.

Shank

Teenage gang member Cal, hides his sexuality from his fellow gang members despite their often violent dislike of anyone that isn't the same as them, be they unsuspecting shoppers, foreign students, gays, etc. When his world collides with Olivier, a student he rescues from a pointless beating, he encounters a lifestyle that presents as many new experiences as it does obstacles.

Deseo

Eight short stories of seduction and illicit encounters between lovers, filled with humor and eroticism, which use a circular structure located in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a colonial city of Mexico.

Endless Poetry

A portrait of the director’s young adulthood, set in the 1940s–1950s, in the electric capital city of Santiago. There, he decides to become a poet and is introduced, by destiny, into the foremost bohemian and artistic circle of the time.