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