Filmmaker Statement

‘Stones’ is a folk horror stop motion animation about nostalgia for home and connection to landscape. When you grow up in the countryside and leave for the city, returning home is a complex experience. Everything has changed and it’s hard to see where you belong. But when you walk out into the countryside, away from the people, the landscape has the same spirit as when you left. There is a permanence in the earth and the stones. You can tie your soul to the land. This film is an exploration of the yearning for belonging, with the added complexity of race - which we are highlighting by placing the characters as British East Asians, eating a picnic of Southeast Asian food. As a writer-director duo, Bec Boey and Joseph Brett’s work sits at the intersection of both of their interests and values: Joseph’s rural background and cult-influenced upbringing in Sussex, and Bec’s experience as a mixed-race British East and Southeast Asian with a love for a countryside she doesn’t always feel we