Filmmaker | Artist

ABOUT

Isla Badenoch is a filmmaker and artist working at the threshold between the inner world and the natural world. Rooted in the Celtic borderlands, her practice spans film, collage, writing, photography, and sound — to explore rites of passage, neurodivergence, grief, and what it means to live softly in a harsh world.

Her work is shaped by an ecological sensitivity to place — the shifting weather of inner landscapes mirrored in tidal flats, flooded homes, quiet forests, and sea edges. Her stories often emerge in collaboration with real people, lived experience, and long periods of observation, drawing from hidden lives to tell something universally felt.

She centres characters at the edges of things — women in stasis, people labelled as mad, the unspoken lives that swell beneath visible structures. She is drawn to the quiet, the surreal, the sacredly strange. With a poetic, atmospheric language and a deep reverence for texture, she creates tender portraits of disconnection and return. Not to explain, but to offer a space where nothing needs to resolve.

She was named a Screen International Star of Tomorrow, and her work has been supported by BFI, Ffilm Cymru, DocSociety, BBC Arts, Arts Council England, LUX Scotland, Screen Scotland and Statens Kunstfond. Her films have screened internationally at BAFTA and Oscar-qualifying festivals, and been featured by BBC4, Vimeo Staff Picks, Short of the Week, and WaterBear.

She is currently developing her debut narrative feature Not Drowning — a flooded rite-of-passage fable — with BFI and Ffilm Cymru.

email: islabadenoch@gmail.com


MA | Visual Culture & Identity | The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art | Copenhagen

BA | English Literature (1:1) | University of Sheffield


RECENT AWARDS / SCREENINGS

FIRST PANIC - Filmmakers Co-op, New York // New Year New Work Festival 2025

NOT DROWNING - BFI Feature Development Fund 2025

Screen International - 15 rising UK writers and directors with global appeal

StoryTANK - selected participant in European Storytelling Think Tank, Brittany 2024

Screen International Star of Tomorrow UK & Ireland 2024

British Council x Black Mountains College - Climate Adaptation for Creatives 2024

BFI Midlands Directors Lab 2024

WHISPERER - Le Groupe Ouest’s, LIM: Less Is More 2024

THE ELVERMEN - Stroud Film Festival 2024

THE ELVERMEN - Borderlines Film Festival, Open Screen Award Winner 2024

THE ELVERMEN - Gåsebäck Film Festival Sweden 2023

NOT DROWNING - BFI Feature Development Fund 2023

WHISPERER - BFI Doc Society Features Fund 2023

NOT DROWNING - Ffilm Cymru, Horizons Feature Film Development Fund 2022-23

THE ELVERMEN - BIFA Best British Short Film Long-list 2022

THE ELVERMEN - British Council x DocSociety ‘Songs of the Earth’ Tour 2022 -23

ONE NIGHT - Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2022

ONE NIGHT - New Renaissance Film Festival 2022

ONE NIGHT - Bolton International Film Festival 2022

ONE NIGHT - BronzeLens Film Festival 2022

THE ELVERMEN - Vision Du Reel, supported by British Council 2022

THE DEAD ARE JEWELS TO ME - Glasgow Short Film Festival, Scottish Competition 2022

ONE NIGHT - Constructed Sight Dance Festival 2022

THE DEAD ARE JEWELS TO ME - London Short Film Festival, UK Competition 2022

THE ELVERMEN - Short of the Week + Vimeo Staff Pick 2021

ELVER - Encounters Film Festival, Shortest Day of the Year 2021

THE ELVERMEN - Camerimage Film Festival, Short Doc Competition 2021

THE ELVERMEN - Raindance Film Festival 2021

THE ELVERMEN - Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2021

THE ELVERMEN - Camden International Film Festival 2021

THE ELVERMEN - Sheffield DocFest, UK Competition 2021

ELVER - ‘One More Edit’ @ Bristol Old Vic 2021

THE DEAD ARE JEWELS TO ME, LUX, Screen Scotland, BBC4 +iPlayer 2021

NOT DROWNING - ACE ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ Grant 2020

NOT DROWNING - BFI New Writers Lab 2020

ELVER - BBC4 Broadcast ‘Dance on Film’ Season 2020

THE ELVERMEN - BFI DocSociety ‘Made of Truth’ Grant 2019

SKAGEN ASTROLOGY - Ondsdagskolen Group Exhibition Denmark 2017

THE BURNNESHA ARCHIVE, Festalen Exhibition Copenhagen 2016

SELECTED WORKS, Copenhagen Photography Exhibition 2016