Censor

Prano Bailey-Bond grew up in the middle of nowhere in Wales, where the nearest thing to a cinema was her family's shelf of videos. Her first feature goes back to the years when those tapes became a national scandal: the video nasties panic of the 1980s, when the tabloids blamed horror films for turning viewers into killers. 'Censor' is a psychological horror about one of the people paid to decide what Britain was allowed to watch.

It's 1985, and Enid is a film censor. Her colleagues call her Little Miss Perfect, because she insists on cutting or banning anything violent, sure that she's protecting the public. Outside the office she carries an old wound: her sister disappeared when they were children, and while her parents have had her declared dead, Enid can't let go.

Things start to unravel when a real murder seems to copy a film Enid passed, and the papers print her name. Soon after, a producer asks her to look at an old horror film, and in it she thinks she sees echoes of her sister's disappearance. From then on, she's less and less sure where the screen ends and real life begins.

Niamh Algar, from 'Calm With Horses' and 'Raised by Wolves', plays Enid, with Nicholas Burns, Michael Smiley and Adrian Schiller, in his last film. Bailey-Bond wrote it with Anthony Fletcher from an idea she'd had before her short 'Nasty', and shot it in Leeds and Pudsey in autumn 2019. She's named Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento and 'The Evil Dead' among her influences.

It premiered at Sundance in January 2021 to strong reviews and opened in British cinemas that August. It went on to win the Méliès d'Or for best European fantastic film at Sitges and picked up nine nominations at the British Independent Film Awards.

• Horror
• Mystery
• Thriller