Education Above All - ‘Calling Attendance’
Winner - D&AD Pencils 2022 wood pencil for ‘Best Casting’.
Winner - Campaign & PR Week Brand Film Awards 2022 for ‘Most Emotional Film’, and Highly Commended for ‘Best Charity Film’.
Winner - Kinsale Sharks 2022 Silver for ‘Best Casting’ and Bronze for ‘Best Direction (child)’.
Winner - Shanghai International Advertising Festival 2022 Silver for ‘Best Short Film Ad’.
Shortlist - Cannes Lions 2022 for ‘Film - Screens and Events’.
Shortlist - Young Arrows 2022 for ‘Colour’.
Director’s Notes interview about the project here.
A film for charity ‘Education Above All’, highlighting deliberate attacks on children’s education around the world, and screened to world leaders at the United Nations. This was a rare opportunity to tell a story on a subject that I’m very invested in, having worked in conflict zones at the start of my career - in a narrative / drama style that is exactly how I want to approach making films.
We wanted to make it feel as real as possible, giving these scenes and characters the emotional weight they would need to make a story like this effective - while still shooting in one location in England. From the start, we limited ourselves to only use photojournalism as visual references. We were looking to replicate the economy of storytelling, where each image would be rich in subtext, suggesting the larger off-camera world and each character’s plight. The aesthetic of the finished film – its lighting, colour, set design and performances – are all drawing from that type of medium-format journalistic photography, along with my own documentary experience.
Directing children in such extreme scenes was one of the most challenging aspects of the project. We were very conscious of the delicate line between scenes being too subtle to tell the story, and being gratuitous or unwatchable. After an extensive casting process, we talked to their parents at length and made an individual plan for each actor on how to brief and direct them, to get the right performances while also creating a good environment for the shoot.
Director - Nathan Sam Long
Producer - Matt Mager
Executive Creative Director - Jim De Zoete
Creative Directors - Maggi Machado, Nick Alden
Production Manager - Viviana Cabral
Executive Producer - Anna Brent
Head of Production - Tom Dore
Agency - Across The Pond London
Director of Photography - Oliver Ford
Production Designer - Jakob Gierse
Editor - Philip Currie
Composer & Sound Designer - Luis Issermann
Colourist - Karol Cybulski
1st Assistant Director - Eno Enefiok
Casting Director - Emma Garrett
Focus Puller - Alasdair Baines
2nd Ac / Loader - Tom Storey
Camera Trainee - Bridie Bennett
DIT - Ashley Hicks
Gaffer - Esteban Gimpelewicz
Sparks - Johnjoe Besagni, Laurent Arnaud
Art Director - Joseph Baaklini
Prop Man - Ben Joffe
Art Assistant - Bec Rodger
Art Assistant - Berhan Medhaen
Sound Recordist - Andrew Griffths
Cellist - David Hornberger
Costume Designer - Emily Rose-Yiaxis
Costume Assistant - Tom Oxley
Make-Up Artist - Lucie Pemberton
Location Manager - Chester Sherburne
Runner - William Clayton
Colour Producer - James Severn
Assistant PM - Mark Pluck
Covid Supervisor - Liz Roberts
Medic - Paul Mortimer
Driver - Abs Allam
Camera Equipment - One Stop Films
Lighting Equipment - SHL Film Lighting
Post-Production - Stitch
Colour Grading - Cheat
Special Thanks
Yasir A.Raheem, Will Moast, Thibault Maas, Charmaine Tan, Vladimir Peresadchenko, Royal Gunpowder Mills