“This Werewolf Complex”
The Alexander Mackendrick Award for Best Director
The Mahmoud Kalari Award for Best Cinematography
The Sara Gómez Award for Best Documentary Film
The Jury’s Statement: The film immerses us in the magical world of a contemporary Alice in Wonderland who falls down the rabbit hole of the human psyche. The imaginative mixture of cinematic elements gave us a new perspective of filmmaking.
Beautifully shot on film with a look that harks back to early colorised cinema, we were most impressed by the dreamlike cinematography.
We felt the creative treatment of The Werewolf Complex was an original and intriguing approach to documentary storytelling.
This experimental documentary is a moving image and sound portrait of the epileptic aura, exploring the sensory, physical, and emotional disturbances caused by seizures in specific parts of the brain. Drawing on the firsthand voices of people who experience these phenomena, the film offers an intimate and personal insight into the many different forms an aura can take, including how it can act as a warning sign for convulsive seizures.
Through its blend of sound, testimony, and visual expression, the film also examines the social stigma surrounding epilepsy and neurological difference, while highlighting the ways these experiences can shape creativity and artistic practice. It is a powerful and thought-provoking film about epilepsy, lived experience, disability, and the relationship between illness and art.
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Heather E. Andrews is a Scottish experimental filmmaker and sound designer from East Ayrshire whose award-winning work blends 16mm film, analogue sound, poetry, and spoken word. As a disabled and neurodivergent artist, she has built a distinctive voice in contemporary Scottish experimental film through work that is both deeply personal and formally innovative.
Her career highlights include being selected for BBC Arts and LUX Scotland’s Now and Next in 2020 and receiving Creative Scotland’s Create Inclusion award, which supported the development of In Erms of Clay. The film later toured the 2021 festival circuit and was featured in LUX Scotland’s One Work series. In 2022, her co-directed short HAAF with Julia Parks was nominated for Best Short Film at EIFF, while This Werewolf Complex, developed through Screen Scotland and GMAC Film’s Little Pictures commission, explored the experience of epileptic aura through the voices of those living with it.