Sauna
Director: Stroma Cairns
In the heat of a community gym's sauna, a disparate group of Londoners gather nightly to open up about community, connection and faith.
Stroma Cairns
director
Stroma has an intimate approach to directing and is drawn to stories revolving around family and youth, inspired by her childhood moving between the Midlands and London. Her first film If You Knew was inspired by her own hearing loss and portrays a day in the life of two teenage twins who are profoundly deaf. The film will have its world premiere at Sheffield Doc Festival in June 2019. Her latest short drama Blud features a group of non-actor teenagers from Islington housing estates and aims to break racial stereotypes and the taboo around periods. Stroma has recently been selected for Channel 4’s talent initiative 4Stories to direct an episode of TV drama.
Imogen West
producer
Imogen’s experience crosses live action and documentary, short films and features. Having developed and supported new creatives across a variety of media, Imogen is currently developing projects with Andrew Ruhemann at Passion Pictures, the multi award-winning animation, live action and feature documentary production company. Imogen has an eye for emerging talent; she began her career producing television commercials, before moving on to work with Stephen Woolley at Scala Productions and producing TwentyFourSeven for Shane Meadows. Imogen is administrator of the George Devine Award whose past winners include Martin McDonagh, Lucy Prebble and Laura Wade.
Sorcha Bacon
producer
Sorcha is a BAFTA nominated producer and founder of Try Hard Films which champions marginalized voices. Her short films include Sparrow (BFI Flare, Underwire), Wren Boys (BFI London, Sundance, SXSW, Galway) and If You Knew, with director Stroma Cairns. In 2019, Sorcha was named as one of 25 Film London Lodestars, and in 2018 an emerging LGBT filmmaker in partnership with BAFTA and the BFI. Working across documentary and fiction, she is developing a number of features with filmmakers including Stella Scott, Helen Simmons and Theo James Krekis as well as a number of short projects with BBC Films, Lush and the Doc Society.