A New Year at Nidd Films

Nidd Valley

As we enter a new year, the question that matters most isn’t what are we making next?

It’s who is this work for, and why does it need to exist?

Nidd Films was founded on the belief that stories rooted in place, history, and lived experience carry a quiet responsibility. They are not made simply to be watched, but to be felt, and to open spaces where conversation, recognition, and understanding can happen.

Many of the stories we develop emerge from overlooked lives and inherited landscapes. They ask what happens when voices are lost, when memory is distorted, or when systems fail to listen. These aren’t abstract ideas. They continue to shape communities today, in how people are believed, or ignored.

As audiences, we all carry silences with us.

Some are personal.

Some are inherited.

Some are enforced.

Some don’t belong to us.

Where in your own life does silence dominate?

Is it in a family story that was never fully told?

A moment that changed everything, but was never spoken about again?

Change rarely arrives loudly. More often, it gathers quietly, in the body, in the land, in the moments when something no longer sits right. Where do you feel change first? And what does it ask of you when it arrives?

In 2026, our focus is on connecting these stories with audiences who need them — not as passive viewers, but as participants in a wider cultural dialogue. Film has the power to create shared moments of recognition, especially when paired with education, discussion, and community-led engagement. That is where its social value deepens.

We are interested in what happens after the screen fades to black.

Who carries the conversation forward?

Who in your world needs to speak first, and who needs to be listened to more carefully?

This year is about building work that can travel beyond the screen:

into classrooms, heritage spaces, conversations, and collective memory.

Work that creates room for empathy rather than noise.

Work that supports reflection rather than spectacle.

The landscapes we film are not backdrops. They are witnesses.

The histories we explore are not closed chapters. They are unfinished.

And the questions they raise do not belong to the past alone.

By grounding cinema in care, for people, for place, and for truth, Nidd Films continues to develop stories that invite audiences to slow down, look again, and listen more closely.

The year ahead is about making space for those encounters, and about what each of us chooses to do with them.

Mark Anthony

Nidd Films