News

After the resounding success of last year’s launch, Directors Notes is thrilled to present our 2025 edition of the WeAreDN Awards. Over the past few weeks we have painstakingly whittled down our 2024 official submissions to a choice list of 28 nominated films, across 9 categories – Drama, Comedy, Buckle Up, New Talent, Animation, Documentary, Music Video, Dance & British – for our expert industry jury – including last year’s only double award winner – to vote on.

Join us on the 1st of May at 7pm, along with our nominated filmmakers, cast, crew and industry professionals for a screening of the winning films, celebratory drinks, networking and, most importantly, dancing.

Sold Out!!!

Please email contact@directorsnotes.com to be added to our ticket standby list.

Our Jury

Dave Taylor-Matthews is an experienced film festival organiser and curator based in Bristol, with over a decade of expertise in film exhibition. Currently serving as the Executive Director of Encounters Film Festival,...

Multi-dn alum filmmaker Adi Halfin makes a welcome return to our pages with the director’s cut of her Calia gym fashion short There’s Beauty in the Burn. It’s a kinetic, energising film that captures the grace and power found in the pain & gain of exercise culture. In just under a minute, we see women in tandem combine intense workouts with the beauty of dance, highlighting how the two aren’t diametrically opposed and are, instead, two sides of the same movement-driven coin. We’ve been fans of Halfin’s filmmaking for years now, so it’s fascinating to see how she adapts her expressive style to new territory. Halfin joined us for the conversation below where she explains the choreographic language she set out to achieve, the process of generating ideas during each step of a project’s creation, and the joy of adaptive commercial filmmaking.

How...