Someone has been reading a little too much Sally Rooney, and that someone is director/writer and star Aylin Tezel, whose ambitious debut feature, Falling Into Place, plays like a finely-honed piece of Rooney-core for the big screen. Not a criticism, per se, but definitely a signifier of the film’s strident views on love, happenstance, shame, trauma, romantic demons, family demons, professional demons, and any type of demons really.

Tezel plays Kira, a speak-as-you-find German living in the UK, who meets cute (twice!) with Chris Fulton’s ultra-sensitive modern guy, Ian, initially while the pair are holidaying on the Isle of Skye, and later back in their normal lives in the urban hellscape of London.

Their idyllic first contact is represented via milky lens flares and bursts of euphoric, Eno-esque ambient noise, as their tentative connection swiftly blossoms into something magical, but that “something”, it transpires, can be no more in this moment.

As both have to return to the dismal drudgery of their personal and professional lives, not to mention their actual romantic partners. The idea of finding that perfect other but having to back away due to circumstance certainly has value, though Tezel does paint Kira and Ian as the only pure souls in a world of self-involved fools. And as such, they’re never entirely likeable or relatable heroes.

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CFFL aims to help devel­op film­mak­ers’ skills through work­shops and Q&As focused on over­com­ing var­i­ous film­mak­ing road­blocks such as dif­fi­cul­ty net­work­ing, restric­tions on bud­get or access to locations.

Bethany adds, ​“Whether you’re inter­est­ed in cin­e­matog­ra­phy, light­ing, sound, you’re an actor, or you’re mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary, there’ll be things at the fes­ti­val that every­one can learn from.” She and Antho­ny believe that the festival’s com­mu­ni­ty spir­it will be fur­ther fos­tered by slight­ly unortho­dox activ­i­ties like karaōke.

The pair believe in the pow­er of social media in build­ing com­mu­ni­ty, and will be lean­ing on it heav­i­ly to help pro­mote cre­atives’ work online and make their col­lab­o­ra­tion and net­work­ing eas­i­er. Bethany describes how in the past many of her col­lab­o­ra­tions have hap­pened from see­ing what peo­ple share on Insta­gram, rather than through film festivals.

“It can be dif­fi­cult some­times. You go to these film fes­ti­vals and meet so many peo­ple and then it’s just silence after­wards. If you don’t man­age to see someone’s film or catch them, and they leave the fes­ti­val imme­di­ate­ly after­wards, you’re not sure how to fol­low them up.”

Through mail­ing lists and social media posts, includ­ing vox pop-style inter­views, Bethany and Antho­ny hope to build a plat­form to help film­mak­ers keep in con­tact with each oth­er long after the first CFFL comes to an end. They also hope to inspire oth­er fes­ti­vals to empha­sise their poten­tial to build com­mu­ni­ties, an essen­tial for ampli­fy­ing under­rep­re­sent­ed voic­es.
Look­ing to the future, CFFL aims to be a year­ly event and even­tu­al­ly join the Asso­ci­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Film Festivals.

In terms of the screen­ing pro­gramme, the fes­ti­val will have an inter­na­tion­al flavour, show­ing films from around the world. The CFFL team has received sub­mis­sions from the likes of Nige­ria, India, Iran and Tai­wan, among others.

“They’re not just shorts, they’re fea­tures and doc­u­men­taries”, Antho­ny remarks. ​“We’re not just look­ing for films that are set in stone and have a par­tic­u­lar bud­get or crew cast attached, but also first-time and sec­ond-time film­mak­ers, and sto­ries that are not just root­ed in the UK but also worldwide.”

The inau­gur­al Col­lec­tive Film Fes­ti­val Lon­don takes place on Fri­day 18 July at Col­lec­tive Act­ing Stu­dio. Book tick­ets at col​lec​tive​act​ingstu​dio​.co​.uk and fol­low the fes­ti­val on Insta­gram.