Games
Focus on… celebrating storytelling in games
Focus on… celebrating storytelling in games
Credit: BAFTA/Oliver Mayhall
Meet
Jessi Gutch
Jessi Gutch is a BIFA-nominated writer, award-winning director and creative producer at her own company, Fig Films. Living with incurable ovarian cancer, Jessi proudly identifies as a disabled filmmaker and tells stories that sit between fact and fiction, between dream and reality.
She was a selected artist in residence at Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage for 2024, and is an alumni of numerous industry talent schemes, including BFI NETWORK @ LFF 2021, Edinburgh Talent Lab 2022, Film London’s Production Finance Market’s New Talent Strand 2022 and Sheffield Doc/Fest Focus: Filmmaker Talent 2022.
For years, Jessi worked as a filmmaker for the NGO sector, specifically within international humanitarian emergencies. She then had her own personal health emergency aged 26, which led to her first industry-backed commission: The Forgotten C (2020) was a semi-autobiographical drama, which was nominated for the British Independent Film Award’s Best British Short. Since then, she has made a series of short films that have all screened at BAFTA-qualifying film festivals. Blind as a Beat was the winner of the Listening Pitch 2021, a semi-finalist at Reel Abilities Film Festival in New York and went on to win Best Experimental Film at the Women Over 50 Film Festival. Until The Tide Creeps In (2022) was a double award winner at Aesthetica, taking home both Best Documentary and Best of Festival. She also co-directed a Film4 short comedy-drama, Pyramid of Disunion (2023), with BAFTA Breakthrough Ella Glendining (who also wrote it), made for its 4Love series. Most recently, Jessi’s short film Last Train Home (2024) was shortlisted for the Primetime Empower Fund, with Jodie Whittaker attached to star in the winning film.
Jessi is currently working on three features: Blue Has No Borders, her debut feature documentary, is due for release in early 2025, with Tigerlily Productions and I am Charlie; My Cells are Trying to Kill Me is in financed development with BFI and Delaval Films; and Saint George is in financed development with Ffilm Cymru Wales and One Wave Films.