Maddie Lock

Thanks to the Young Film Network South East, I was able to return to Watersprite Film Festival 2025 in Cambridge after being a part of their Watersprite Hubs programme in 2024. As a young filmmaker, opportunities like these are really beneficial in helping not only to grow my understanding of the film industry, but also to expand my network of filmmakers my age who I could collaborate with, and those more experienced who can offer guidance and knowledge.

Having experienced the joy of Watersprite in 2024, I knew I wanted to attend again, and this desire to return was amplified when I got selected to sit on the Production Design Award jury for 2025. Sitting on a jury helped me to have a greater understanding of the selection process that goes into awards judging, with great insights into the thoughts of other panel members and seeing how conversations can shift the final decisions. I was fortunate to sit alongside the 2023 Animation Award winner, Maja Kjellstad Aanonsen, screenwriter, producer and campaigner, Jessica Riches, and Project Director of Theatreship, Inigo Lapwood. Fortunately, our opinions mostly sat along similar lines, but even on the occasions where our thoughts did differ, everyone on the jury was able to work through these discussions in a meaningful and respectful way. The only downside of being a jury member was that we didn’t know the final result, of course keeping it a secret until the Watersprite Awards Ceremony in Cambridge, which only made me want to attend the festival even more.

This year, Watersprite had a range of amazing talks throughout the weekend. From the production design of Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025), and producing and developing Doctor Who, right through to informative talks from film lawyers, stunt doubles, and intimacy coordinators to show some of the behind-the-scenes or lesser celebrated film industry roles. The first event I attended was all about Making Your First Feature, which had an excellent panel consisting of writer/director Tyro Heath in conversation with producer Helen Simmons, who recently worked on Luna Carmoon’s brilliantly unique debut, Hoard (2023). This gave great insight into the jump between making short films to creating a feature film, including how to find financial backing and the important role of the producer in making it happen. With a keen interest in documentaries, I followed up this talk by attending Documentaries That Make A Difference, with insights from documentary filmmakers Anna Hall and Nick Read. Unfortunately Ayse Toprack, who co-directed My Name is Happy with Read, couldn’t make the talk. However, there were still some interesting discussions around ethical and impactful documentary making, and the importance of films needing to have meaningful narratives that inspire change based on the desires of current audiences.

It wouldn’t be the world’s largest student film festival without an incredible awards ceremony, and the Watersprite Awards didn’t disappoint. With the 29 nominated films spanning across 16 countries, it goes to show the international impact this film festival has on the careers of young and emerging filmmakers around the world. Hosted at the Museum of Zoology, it was a beautiful ceremony with celebratory drinks made even more spectacular by the ginormous Fin Whale on display in the museum entrance. One of the most exciting things about attending festivals like this is the community aspect and network-building that happens naturally when you put filmmakers at similar stages of their careers in a room together. I not only got to meet the lovely Maya and Inigo who I sat on the Production Design jury with, but also Inigo’s co-director of Theatreship, Natalie Hill, some of the selected mentees for the Watersprite Mentorship 2025, and even Sam Heasman, the cinematographer who helped create the film the festival is named after, Who’s Afraid of the Water Sprite (2009), and has attended Watersprite every year since. It was also lovely to reconnect with people I’d met at the festival or through film events over the past year, from Watersprite Hubs alumni Emma Seiko and Natalie Chan, to my fellow Short Cut Film Fund 2023/24 awardee Majola Akinyemi. Everyone at Watersprite described the atmosphere as a family reunion, and this is certainly something I relate to with each year I continue to be within the film industry. It can be so scary starting out and learning your way, but once you begin to recognise faces and have people you’re excited to see again at these events, it all becomes that little bit easier.

The wonderful thing about Watersprite is that even if you miss an event, or can’t attend in person, they record all of the events for you to watch online for a short period afterwards. This has allowed me to catch up on some excellent talks that clashed with other events in my schedule. Potentially one of my favourite talks of the weekend was the Curating Queer Cinema talk, featuring BFI Flare programmer, Rhianna Ilube, and founder of Queer East, Yi Wang.

Overall, Watersprite Film Festival 2025 was a wonderful experience, and one that I will be eternally thankful to Young Film Network South East for helping me attend. I’m proud to be a member of the Watersprite family, and can’t wait to see what everyone goes on to do throughout the years, especially the very well deserved winner of the Production Design Award, Leonie Enslin for the beautiful design of Heartware (2024).

Maddie Lock (they/them) is a filmmaker and artist born in Eastbourne and based in Brighton. They wrote and directed the short musical about neurodiversity, Welcome to the Puppet Show: A Day at the Circus (2024) as part of the inaugural Short Cut Film Fund 2023/24, which premiered at BFI Southbank and won Best Micro Musical at Folkestone Film Festival. Since then, they’ve founded Worm Factory, Sussex-based film/arts collective spotlighting marginalised voices & creating through an accessible, LGBTQ+ lens. They were also shortlisted and got to pitch for the Iris Prize Documentary Fund 2024 for their documentary film Family Tides, which is currently in production.