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Blackout
Poole, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, United Kingdom
Aim
A sudden power cut at a boarding school gives way to teenage cruelty. Noor, an immigrant teen, must choose: take a stand or stay silent.
Blackout follows Noor and Esther, two immigrant teenagers at a British boarding school, as they try to navigate a reality that pushes them aside. A sudden power cut at a boarding school gives way to teenage cruelty. When Noor witnesses injustice, she needs to make a choice: to act, or remain passive in the face of adversity?
Blackout is a psychological drama, deeply rooted in personal experiences of bullying and exclusion of the outsiders, and explores the complexities of being a foreigner in the UK.
The present is imbued with hallucinatory and magical elements grounded in the real world, taking you on a journey to Noor’s psyche.
The cruelty of teenagers in the story serves as a reflection of the world we live in. Blackout captures a moment of teenage life to reveal how patterns of exclusion and discrimination echo into adulthood.
The visual language of Blackout seeks to immerse the viewer in a deeply subjective experience from Noor’s perspective, evoking a sensory response in the viewers. The cinematography will capture inmate, fragile moments where subtle gestures reveal the characters’ inner worlds. At other times, framing techniques will be used to isolate Noor, underscoring her solitude and sense of dislocation, a stranger in a place she struggles to belong to.
Familiar spaces will take on an uncanny quality, as darkness seeps into every corner, and the environment closes in on the characters. High-contrast lighting will heighten the tension, creating a dark and oppressive environment full of unresolved tension.
The sound design aims to evoke an unsettling mood, expressing otherness and amplifying Noor’s psychological state as her subconscious materializes in the physical environment.
The editing approach is to elicit suspense and a sense of unease, placing the main characters in an environment they can’t escape from. The editing pace creates a sense of discovery, taking the viewers on an unexpected journey along with the protagonist.
The production design will focus on creating believable, lived-in boarding school interiors.The worn aesthetic and traditional design becomes the perfect backdrop for the story’s surreal undercurrents to emerge.
The school corridor serves as a key visual and emotional space: a liminal zone where Noor drifts between reality and hallucination; the surrounding walls gradually reflect her own subconscious turmoil.
Costume and makeup design will mirror the characters’ personalities and subtly express the social hierarchies within the school, grounding the story’s realism while deepening its emotional texture.
To bring our film to life, we need your help!
Your donations will go towards key elements to make a professional and engaging film.
These include:
- Building an entire set, to look as believable and lived-in as possible
- Casting experienced actors
- Having access to unique locations that are vital for the story
- Being able to use the specialist equipment we need
- Designing costumes that make the characters turn into real people
- Feeding the cast & crew while on Production
Any contribution, big or small, can make a huge difference to us!
Director statement
The story of Blackout touches on themes close to my heart as someone who has often felt like an outsider, as well as being a foreigner in a new country. The film explores the quest to belong and how we cope with adversities, and making it would give a voice to a feeling I’ve carried with me for years. It’s for anyone who has ever felt misunderstood, out of place, or caught between worlds. It’s a reflection of that struggle, and an effort to release it. I'm looking forward to exploring ways to use magic realism as a vehicle to portray one´s inner life and ground these elements within a relatable environment.
Writer statement
One of my most significant memories from my teenage years in a boarding school is how young people often integrated themselves into one identity to maintain social power. I believe that there is so much to explore in the psychology of young people who are trapped in an isolated space and what their growing minds can create to cope with the issues they face. As an adult, now living in a different country that is regressing in the topic of immigration, I’ve decided to write Blackout by reimagining a cruel event that happened to my outcast roommate, trying to touch upon the subject of racial discrimination, and how the same framework that creates mob mentalities is often the reason why people torment foreigners.
This project successfully funded on 11th December 2025