Aftersun

Charlotte Wells's Aftersun had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival's Critics' Week in May 2022, where it won the French Touch Jury Prize, Wells's debut feature as writer-director, made with support from the BFI Film Fund, BBC Film and a co-production with the distributor MUBI. A24 distributes the film in North America; MUBI released it theatrically in the United Kingdom in November 2022. Wells, who grew up in Edinburgh and trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, draws loosely from her own childhood for the film's central relationship.

Paul Mescal (Normal People, God's Creatures) leads as Calum alongside first-time screen actress Frankie Corio as Sophie. Cinematographer Gregory Oke shoots the film across two formats (35mm widescreen and miniDV video to evoke Sophie's camcorder archive) and the juxtaposition of warm, grainy tape with cooler contemporary images gives the film its distinctive temporal texture. The score is by Oliver Coates; editing is by Blair McClendon.

At the 2022 British Independent Film Awards, Aftersun swept seven prizes from sixteen nominations (including Best Film, Best Director, Best Debut Director and Best Screenplay) the largest single-film haul in the ceremony's history. At the 76th BAFTA Film Awards, Wells won Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer; the film was also nominated for Outstanding British Film. It has since appeared on decade-so-far lists from The Guardian, Sight & Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma, and is now widely discussed as one of the significant British directorial debuts of the 2020s.