Our 2021 'Drama' Short Film Competition Winner

By Darius Shu, Silver Prince Pictures

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Synopsis:

Based on a true story of tenacity, a seven-year-old boy struggles to make sense of words on the page. But when Mike is diagnosed with dyslexia and the teachers continue to fail him, his mother takes matters into her own hands to help her son fulfill his true potential.

Idea for the film:

The idea came about after we knew about the story of Pat and Mike Jones and we wanted to show that this is a story faced by many around the world, not just in the UK. Their story was incredibly inspirational especially within the dyslexia community or with people facing it and we wanted people to know that there is a way to deal with dyslexia. Our mission was to create a film to spread awareness of children with dyslexia as they are not only being failed but are also being damaged by the system. People assume dyslexia is being addressed but in reality, it isn’t. We wanted to address that every school needs a minimum of one dyslexia specialist teacher as it is still not compulsory to have them.

How long it take to film? Was it plain sailing?

It took a total of 4 days to film the short week. We had quite a lot to shoot and we also had to work around our actor’s schedule at that time so we had to split our shoot days into two different weeks, two days each week. We had lots to shoot especially the montage sequence but we had such an incredible and efficient crew who is able to turn around each scene setup very quickly. Thinking back I didn’t know how we actually did that! Truly grateful to have such talented people around to work alongside with!

What’s next?

I’m currently working with director Yewweng Ho and producer Gordon Lewis on their next film which is driven by music, called Dream of the Return which tells the story of an elderly Chinese lady dealing with loneliness and lost. Personally, I just finished working on a British-South Asian drama musical called Queer Parivaar and a Netflix documentary. I’m also working on my debut feature film under my production company Silverprince Pictures.

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