Villanelle shortlisted at Women over 50 Film Festival

Can't quite believe that Villanelle has been shortlisted for an award at the Women over Fifty Film Festival. The brainchild of BBC scriptwriter, playwright and short filmmaker Nuala Sullivan, this is not only a creative film festival addressing gender and ageism, but also should be applauded for their wider activities. Moving Pictures is one of WOFFF's projects a 'mini-festival reaching elder care homes, community centres and charities across London and the wider UK through a programme of short films and creative activities'. 

Thirty submissions have been shortlisted and I am really looking forward to going to Lewes for September 13th to watch them all. Villanelle is both a short film that developed over time, with possibilities that came my way, and my two amazingly talented daughters; and also, at the time it was made, a disgust at Harvey Weinstein and a solidarity with the MeToo movement that had begun a few years before.

​Now, of course, as I write, we are faced with Trump, Epstein, and also John Casablancas who ran Elite Model Agency ... I was a model a long time ago, at the end of the 1970s (see my memoir Horse-Woman) and I had heard stories even then about Casablancas. I also knew that girls would be invited to places such as Japan and then find they had become offered as escorts and financially couldn't return home. At my agency I turned down such an offer from a Japanese agency (seeing what could potentially happen). I would like to now dedicate this film to Sacramento-born Virginia Giuffre who unfortunately died in April (apparently by suicide, but of course this is being questioned) and whose untiring work in addressing sex trafficking and the 'billionaire playboy club' should be commemorated – ideally in a more permanent form. 

Please see the shortlist below for all the finalists.
 wofff.co.uk/2025/08/judges-shortlist-2025/  
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