Molly Manning Walker: forging a bold new era for British cinema
After the release of Aftersun, Scrapper and Blue Jean, there was a definitive shift in mood that seemed to signal a new era of British cinema. Women’s stories became front and centre, creating a much-needed girls club in the film industry through nuanced explorations of typically unseen experiences. Charlotte Wells’ debut feature swept audiences and critics at the Cannes Film Festival in its singularly devastating exploration of grief and childhood nostalgia, with the images washing over you in a slow daze until you’re hit with an emotional ton of bricks that obliterates you.
Charlotte Regan’s dazzling feature debut, Scrapper, came after a long love affair with independently produced shorts that solidified her as one of the leading voices in this bold new movement. However, the release of How To Have Sex in 2023 cemented that perhaps, this movement is here to stay.
Walker began her career as a cinematographer, starting as a DOP on ASAP Rocky’s music video for Sundress and then working on Scrapper with fellow filmmaker Charlotte Regan. However, while there have been many actors who have then moved behind the camera or even writers who have tried their hand at directing, it is less rare to see cinematographers make this switch.
While undeniably creative, DOP’s are typically rooted in a sense of logic and technicality due to the fact that the role revolves around technology. But Walker’s later work as a director reflects a slow cultural shift in the film industry as the previously dominating hierarchies are being dismantled, with this group of women taking the lead in British cinema and breaking apart the structures that have restricted others from doing so.
How To Have Sex is a unique feature debut given Walker’s fluency in the medium’s visual language, articulating emotional interiority through considered camera movements and tricks, and showing a mastery over the form that has led to such a balanced and confident directorial debut.
However, perhaps the assured voices of these filmmakers are also a reflection of the challenges that emerging filmmakers face in finding funding and support, with their exceptional debuts also being a result of the pressure placed on them given that opportunities are so few and sparse, leading them to leave no stone unturned and meticulously hone their vision. First impressions are famously the most important, and with substantial cuts to creative funds there are now fewer ways for people to translate their ideas on screen, meaning that any opportunity could be the last.
But the likes of Walker, Regan, Wells and Georgia Oakley point towards a tepid new future for those trying to make it in the film industry, showing that there are untold stories all around us, and when we nurture these voices, not only will they flourish but so will British cinema as a whole. The success of Aftersun and particularly How to Have Sex marks a promising new future for female filmmakers, with the overwhelmingly positive response to these stories showing that independent film is alive and well and people are dying to finally see these unspoken experiences shown on the big screen.
