Director from Wandsworth Named as Film London Lodestar 2021
Matt Kay tipped as one to watch for the future
Matt Kay - Film London Lodestar 2021
A film director from Wandsworth has been named as a Film London Lodestar 2021.
Matt Kay joins an annual list of innovative creators and practitioners within Film, TV and Games from across the capita who are tipped to go on to ever greater works in coming years.
Matt is an award winning documentary filmmaker. In the past nine years he has directed and shot a variety of projects for broadcast, cinema and online including Netflix, BBC and over fifty film festivals. His latest short Little Miss Sumo won several awards before launching as a Netflix Original in 2019. Matt is currently expanding Little Miss Sumo into a feature documentary called SUWO. He is also directing a feature for A&E IndieFilms about one of the world’s most successful music groups.
He said, “Film London gave me my first proper break by believing in my idea and providing initial funding. This became Little Miss Sumo which was shown in 40 film festivals, won several awards and had its North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. There it was picked up by Netflix who launched it as a Netflix original in 2019.
“This helped hugely in allowing me to get other work both in the UK and the US and I am now directing several feature docs with others in the pipeline. All this was possible due to the recognition and attention my Film London short received and so I will be forever grateful to Film London and all the staff that have helped me throughout the last few years.”
Selected from a pool of hundreds of people, Film London Lodestars reflects the breadth of talent across London’s screen industries, celebrating a variety of successes from festival circuits and distribution deals to community and environmental impact and gallery residencies.
Over the course of the year, British talent has continued to be recognised worldwide through both award wins and the ever-increasing demand for content and infrastructure. Londoners have been at the forefront of this recognition, and Film London Lodestars seeks to reinforce and celebrate this success.
Previous Lodestars have gone on to achieve critical and commercial acclaim including Blue Story producer Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor, currently on board to produce new BBC drama Champion, director Koby Adom who will be returning for a second season of BBC’s Noughts + Crosses, and director and producer Marley Morrison and Michelle Antoniades, whose debut feature Sweetheart has just secured a distribution deal with Peccadillo Pictures off the back of winning the Audience Award at the 2021 Glasgow International Film Festival.
Adrian Wootton OBE, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said, “I’m thrilled to congratulate Matt on becoming a 2021 Lodestar, selected from an incredibly high calibre of talent that reflects the diversity of London, encompassing a wide range of sectors and practices from film, TV and games, to archive film, exhibition and artists’ moving image. Lodestars is proving to be a true marker of industry talent, with alumni going on to achieve mainstream distribution and critical recognition for their work – even in this last, challenging, year. With global demand for content at an all-time high, I’m incredibly excited by the opportunities that await this year’s Lodestars to tell bold and diverse stories from across the capital.”
Find out more about each individual Film London Lodestar 2021 here where a series of short films have been released.
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June 22, 2021