Yarns: Disinfo premieres at Curzon Soho​

Last Thursday night Yarns took over Curzon Soho for a wonderful evening celebrating the premiere of this years’ winning shorts, Clankers, Don’t Believe A Word I Say, and Angling For Love, each tackling vastly different interpretations on the open ended brief: Disinfo. 

The packed audience were treated to a showcase of up-and-coming talent hosted by double act Craig Bingham and Ozzie Pullin of Now Then Talks, who conducted an insightful Q&A after the screening to dive deeper into the directors’ visions and experiences throughout the process. This year's directors were all awarded the coveted Yarns moth, presented by the competition organisers Sarah Adewunmi and Alex Lennox-Warburton.

Naomi Pallas’ hybrid documentary Clankers was praised for blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, comedy and existential terror in her exploration of the dark world of AI influencers. A welcome challenge for Stitch editor Laura Zvaríková to piece together entirely from screen recorded footage, and snippets of Zoom conversations.

Pallas commented "It was my first time making a desktop documentary so it was a steep learning curve full of highs and lows but the best thing about Yarns was the incredible support from beginning to end. Everyone at Yarns, and all of the partners were so enthusiastic and helpful. And of course my editor Laura was the best! We captured hours and hours of footage of me building the model so it was a case of distilling it to a compelling narrative in five minutes."

Ciara O’Rourke’s gripping exploration of working class masculinity struck a cord in the audience. Along with her producer Jack Clarke, she took the Yarns funding home to Doncaster with a crew of local talent, to fulfil her passion for creating more filmmaking opportunities in the North. The film balances humour with its harder hitting underlying message through the work of first time Yarns editor Ruoyu Ou.

O’Rourke and Clarke had to say "The whole thing was scary and new in the best way. Filming in Donny came with its own challenges: lack of facilities, lack of belief that film can even happen here but sticking to it was important. What we learned, what we pulled off, and the support we had from Yarns made it all worth it. A huge thanks to our editor Ruoyu and our sound designer Michele Covio, who both pushed themselves right alongside us, and the lovely bunch at Freefolk for believing in the film as much as we did."

Tom Tennant’s Angling For Love offered spades of laughs while poking fun at the surreal side of online dating, a hilarious script elevated by the comedic timing of Yarns regular Luke Anderson. A brilliant display of the creativity that is born from working within budget restraints, guests could be seen donning props from the film in the bar after the screening.

Tennant shared Angling For Love "wouldn’t have even existed as an idea, let alone got made, had it not been for Yarns, so I’m very grateful to the whole team at Homespun and Stitch (and the Yarns partners) for all their support; I’ve loved the entire process."

Praise was also given to the post partners Sine Audio Post, Absolute, Freefolk and 1920vfx for the outstanding sound design, VFX and colour grading on display on the big screen, as well as competition sponsors Kodak, APA and Kinsale Sharks for generously supporting the next generation of filmmakers.