Professor Virginia Heath’s short film ‘Lift Share’ screening at Underwire Festival – the UK’s largest film festival celebrating female filmmaking talent

Professor Virginia Heath’s new film Lift Share will screen in Official Competition at the Underwire Festival on Saturday 24 November at the Barbican Cinema in London.

Co-written by Berlinale award-winning, and BAFTA nominated, Director Virginia Heath, the film (22 minutes) is part of a diverse and challenging shorts programme called Family Matters. Family Matters promises to explore familiar relationships from many angles: “Extraordinary situations merge with the everyday to explore notions of grief, alienation, shame, belonging and love.”

Lift Share – Screening as part of Family Matters
Underwire Festival at the Barbican Cinema, London
Saturday 24 November, 4PM
For ticketing information please see here.

Underwire is a BAFTA qualifying #feminist film festival – the UK’s largest celebrating female filmmaking talent.

In Lift Share, two strangers meet through an online lift share website: a young Romanian woman in desperate search of a child that was forcibly taken from her and a Scottish musician returning to the Isle of Harris to face up to the death of his violent, estranged father.  As they drive through the Scottish Highlands, the film moves between present and future time frames as each character imagines what they might do when they reach the Outer Hebrides.  Alone with their fears, the haunting beauty of the remote Islands helps them find escape from their past pain. The comfort that only strangers can bring enables them to share a moment of hope for the future.

The film was made with support from Creative Scotland, BFI.NETWORK, Scottish Film Talent Network, An Comhairle (Western Isles Council), Faction North, Kolik Films and the Art & Design Research Centre (ADRC) at Sheffield Hallam University.

Professor Virginia Heath is a Professor of Film in the Art and Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, and is a writer, film-maker and researcher. Virginia has written and directed several award winning films and her films are screened at international film festivals including Berlin, Cannes, The Hamptons, New York, Vancouver, St Petersburg. Virginia’s projects include My Dangerous Loverboy (2009)  a powerful multi-platform project addressing human-trafficking and sexual-exploitation which formed the basis of an outstanding Impact Case Study  for Unit of Assessment 34: Art & Design (History, Theory & Practice) in REF2014, and From Scotland with Love (2014) a feature-length poetic documentary combining archive footage and original music composition which received a BAFTA Scotland nomination.