Happy Christmas Eve everyone.  And what an early gift:  the short film I wrote and produced, Darner, won Best Horror Film with the Berlin Indie Film Festival!  Berlin is a really amazing festival which promotes upcoming and new voices across film, including genres like horror, so it meant a great deal to win the Best Horror Award for the month of Jan 2026 (I know the good news arrived early!).

A huge congratulations needs to go out to the whole team, because especially in independent film, everyone has to bring their best work in order to make the film. The director, James Edward Newton, is a radical surreal director who makes bold, emotion driven films; the DOP is Andy Boothby, who has long collaborated with James as well as myself and my fiancé, Tony Mardon; Tony is, in fact, the lead actor in this film, and while he will be best known for Ted Lasso, he is amazing in this.  And the special effects team elevates this film into the disturbingly beautiful film it is. They are Jason Jay Lowe, the head SFX designer, and his support, Alex Gent.  A truly amazing team, look them all up because they work on an incredible array of horror films and are insanely good at what they do.

For anyone who is interested, you can also check out Darner‘s IMDB page for more, or follow the film or myself on Instagram to see when it is next screening.