Some stories are not being told. We are here to change that.
Screen Sisters is an initiative for women of faith and women from underrepresented communities — to tell their own stories, to be seen honestly on screen, and to build the skill to do it themselves.
Two things people come to us for, and both are legitimate
Some women want a career on a unit. We train them to the standard of high-end television and feature film, inside a working studio, with practitioners working at the grade now.
Others have no intention of working in film, and every intention of being represented properly. They hold a story, or a community does. Wanting the story told and nothing else is a complete position, and it is one we build for.
Where to go
Tell the story
An idea becomes a script, then a film, made with a working crew. You do not have to be a writer, or want a career in film.
Story-to-Screen Lab
The route from an idea to a finished piece, made to broadcast and feature standards. Co-run with Futures in Film CIC at 3 Mills and Pinewood.
Train with us
Camera, grip, stabilisation, lighting, sound, DIT (digital imaging technician) and post, taught at the grade, on a real unit with a real call sheet.
Commission us
Film made with the communities in it, and faith-literate practice written down rather than improvised.
Why this is harder than it should be
The industry accepts that women have been underserved across the screen sector. It accepts that women from underrepresented communities face more than that again.
A woman who is also from a faith or minority community meets a third layer on top — practical, cultural and representational — and almost nothing in the sector is built for it. Prayer and fasting are not in the schedule. Dress is negotiated on the day, badly. Her community appears on screen as shorthand, written by people who have never sat in her front room.
It runs both ways, and we say so without blaming either side. The industry has not built the door. Some communities have not encouraged their women through it. We work on both.
A short opener: a working unit on the floor at 3 Mills, and a woman in a hijab and hi-vis directing it. Sixty seconds, no voiceover.
Pinewood Futures Festival 4K B-roll; AQS Liverpool film.
What the work is actually for
Faith seen as it is lived
Not as shorthand, and not explained on anyone's behalf. By the people it is about.
Misconceptions answered
By the women they concern, in their own words, on a screen an audience is already watching.
Communities in the same room
Jewish, Christian and Muslim women on the same production. A different thing from a dialogue event.
Capacity, not charity
The skill to tell it yourself, held afterwards, whether or not you ever work in the industry.
A base inside a working studio
3 Mills Studios in East London, where the industry moved. Not a classroom.
Open to everyone
Women of faith — Jewish, Christian and Muslim — and those who share our values. Women of no faith are welcome.
You can start with nothing
No experience, no equipment, no connection to the industry, and no intention of joining it. Places are fully funded.
Bring a story, or come and learn how they are made
Both doors lead into the same building.