Ellen Evans is an award-winning British filmmaker whose work has screened at international festivals including Sundance and SXSW, and on public broadcast channels including PBS and the BBC. In 2020, she won a Grierson Award for her BFI-funded short, 'Country Girl'. In 2024, Ellen completed her first short drama, 'Cold Snap' with BBC Film. The film was selected for the Short Film Competition at the 68th BFI London Film Festival. Ellen teaches at University College London, where she is a lecturer on the MFA Creative Documentary by Practice.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background in filmmaking? What inspired you to pursue a career in the film industry?
I started out as a documentary filmmaker, making a number of short films in my mid-twenties. More recently, I wanted to explore fiction - and last year I wrote and directed my first drama, Cold Snap, with the support of Ken Loach's Sixteen Films and BBC Film. As a documentary filmmaker, I wanted to present lives that were complex, sometimes provocative. I think now with drama I have the same impulse,
What does being part of Berlinale Talents mean to you? Is there something about the city that resonates with your creative process?
Being part of Berlinale Talents has been a long standing dream of mine, and I'm thrilled to be invited to participate in this year's edition. So many of my collaborators have been part of the Talent Forum and I'm excited to meet some potential future ones too! I'm also looking forward to spending time in Berlin, a city I've always associated with freedom and creativity.
How do you balance expressing your unique voice while creating work that resonates with audiences around the world?
I think my films have always felt distinctly British, because of the characters, because of their setting, but the stories within them are, of course, universal.
This year’s theme is 'Listen Courageously – Cinematic Narratives in Times of Dissonance.' How does the theme connect to your work and the stories you want to tell?
I think I've always been drawn to contradiction and ambiguity, I'm interested in stories which explore the shades of grey. For me, cinema is most exciting when it avoids simplistic moral narratives, and instead puts forward complex, sometimes conflicting, truths.