Sarah Smith

All cheer seasons end. Some close naturally. Others end sooner than planned. No matter the reason, leaving a gym is a moment that can shape your reputation long after the season is over. Athletes grow. Priorities change. Programs evolve. Those realities a... See more

A young woman drags a lifeless body across a remote beach, documenting each laboured step on her phone. Where she’s going and why remains obscured, the nature of her connection to the corpse surfacing only in fragments. It’s a premise that could belong to... See more

As I continue to process 2025, a year that felt hellish inside my skin and in the world burning around me, I proved to myself that I can put on a face, fight, and endure— I learned that endurance without rest leads to collapse. Last spring/summer, I took ... See more

Ben Wheatley first turned up on Directors Notes in 2009 with Down Terrace—a crime drama shot in eight days in a borrowed Brighton house by a filmmaker nobody had heard of at the time. We liked his work immediately. From that starting point, we followed hi... See more

Florence Poppy Deary enters orbit Kicking off a series of interviews with recipients of 2025 shots EMEA awards, Sarah Smith chats to New Director of the Year winner, Florence Poppy Deary, who applies a spaceship metaphor to her decade-long overnight succe... See more