Exclusive: British film director Daisy-May Hudson, lollipopThe film, which features a woman’s struggle to protect her children after being released from prison, heads to Parliament with Labor MP Jess Asato to discuss the real-world issues raised in the film and campaign for change.
The panel discussion will be held at Portcullis House in Westminster on 13 January and will look at key moments and discuss opportunities for policy change. lollipop.
Hudson and Asato will be joined by cast members including family court barristers Posey Stirling, Idil Ahmed and Shelma Polidor, who appear in the film, as well as Kirsty Kitchen, director of charity and campaign organization Birth Companions Institute (which works to support pregnant women, mothers and babies in complex situations), and individuals with lived experience.
This session will focus on pressing issues related to maternal incarceration, child social care, family courts, housing provision, and intergenerational cycles of trauma and harm.
“I feel like this next step for this film to go to Congress is very powerful because it’s using film to encourage policy change,” Hudson said. “It’s not just empathy, it’s real change in society that can create a holistic system of care for people, and intergenerational healing in our communities. Film has the power to bring about that kind of important change, because it allows us to move beyond just describing facts and figures and go deeper into the emotions of someone else’s experience in which someone must act.”
lollipop It had its world premiere at the 2024 Edinburgh International Film Festival and was given a limited release by MET Films in the UK and Ireland in the summer. It will be broadcast on BBC Two and available on BBC iPlayer from January 16th.
Stirling, who won the British Independent Film Award (Bifa) for Breakthrough Performance for the role earlier this month, plays a woman named Molly who is released after serving four months in prison. She expects it will be several hours before she can pick up the children from the foster care facility. Instead, she finds she can’t get housing because her children don’t live with her, but she also can’t get them back without a roof over her head. Cut off from the system, she must rely on the help of her childhood friend to survive.
The film was produced by Parkville Pictures, with support from BBC Films and the BFI, and distributed by Architects.
“Seeing Molly and her children portrayed so powerfully; lollipop “This film really resonated with me, and I quickly noticed the similarities between their Catch-22 situation and the ones I hear about across the country on a daily basis. This film is a valuable tool for politicians and those with the power to make change to see how current policies have a direct impact on mothers and families,” Asato said.
Kirsty Kitchen, director of Birth Companions Institute, added: lollipop I submitted this great film to Congress along with Daisy May and the rest of the team that created this great film because it tells an important story about raising children in such a difficult and hostile system. ”
“I wrote lollipop “No offense,” Hudson said. “We spoke to advisors with real-life experience in every sector of the system to help us have a transparent and thoughtful discussion about whether this system is the best we can have. When people feel blamed, they become defensive; when they feel understood, they connect, and we can start having healthy, transparent discussions about whether the system is working for us and whether we are satisfied with it.”
Hudson’s credits also include the 2015 documentary half way The film chronicles her own family’s experience of homelessness over a two-year period, and she co-directed the feature-length documentary with Sophie Compton. Hollowaya film about six former inmates in a women’s prison, won the Documentary Audience Award at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival.
