Frozen moments

Two years ago director Martin Furze picked up a Gold Screen at the Young Director Award, along with a slew of other prizes, for his debut film, Voiceless Women.

Now he's back with another brilliantly observed piece of work, created for NGO The Mary Foundation, which speaks to the isolation many people, especially young people, have felt over the last 15 months. 

In the film, which is called When the World Stopped and which was shot through Mayday Films and created by No Sleep Switzerland, we witness a dreamlike and eerie walkthrough of the moment where everything froze in time. We see traffic jams, a bike accident and a house party, each scenario featuring young people attempting to deal with their new reality, before ending up in a teenager's room as she tries to come to terms with the frozen world outside her window. 

"The inspiration for the film," explains Furze, who is signed to Bacon for commercial representation, "is the idea that every social interaction stopped in an instant,  leaving all the teens in their own room feeling left out of social gatherings that were in fact not even happening anymore. We set out to create a world in complete stand still, with the cast not moving or blinking, and aiding the illusion with VFX. Everything was shot on 16mm film [as] we wanted the aesthetic of the camera shake to act as a counterpart to the frozen world. The art direction and production design worked in tandem to create a warped and highly stylised world. The look and feel both spoke the visual language of the teen-target audience, but also left an impression of a weird, parallel world that, although foreign, seemed completely relatable."