MONSTERS (2025)

*Winner of the Audience award for Best Short Film at the 2025 Cambridge Film Festival*

Windows rattle. The floor shakes. Ripples in your water cup. A bright light in the distance. Then the monsters arrive. Swimming monsters! Flying monsters! A giant mutant eyeball! Lasers! Fireballs! All of this really happened, or could have happened, or is actually happening.

Monsters is a post-apocalyptic East Anglian fairy tale. A documentary about an event that hasn’t happened (yet) created by and starring dozens of ordinary children from all across the region. In derelict barns and abandoned theatres they have imagined a world very different to our own and what they would need to do to survive in it. In this film they will tell you about that world.

Created in collaboration with local children in one of the most environmentally fragile areas of the UK, this experimental documentary repurposes the tropes of Hollywood monster movies to explore young people’s real feelings and fears through an imaginary framework. This fantasy apocalypse becomes a safe space for the children to reflect on adaptation, resilience and an uncertain future.

Created by Andy Field and Beckie Darlington with children from Gladstone Primary Academy in Peterborough, Sheringham Primary School, Rushmere Hall Primary School in Ipswich, and Somerleyton Primary School.

Director of Photography Laura Seward
Composer Rhiannon Armstrong
Editor and Colourist Mike Myshko
Graphic Design Will Brady

MONSTERS was commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival, with SPILL Festival, First Light Festival, Nene Park Trust, and Sheringham Little Theatre. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.