WINTER

Aim: We are raising funds for our female-led Sci Fi short shooting in September.

If you could save only one item from your life, what would it be?

Welcome to the fundraising page for WINTER! Winter is a sci-fi short written, directed, and starring emerging female talent. Production is slated for early September in London and we need your support to help bring our vision to life. 

A new, female-coded Sci-Fi: THE MATRIX meets FRANCES HA.

Set entirely in the home of friends ELLA and TESS, with an apocalypse raging just outside its windows, WINTER asks us how we define ourselves by the things we surround ourselves with, and how we live when all of it is gone. 

As the rest of the population opt to ditch a broken world, and instead sign up to join a simulation, the pair decide to open a storage facility service. When someone joins the simulation, they can send one item of their choosing to Ella and Tess to become part of the museum of memories, preserved when every other trace of their life is gone. 

The two friends disagree about the credibility of the simulation, whether the technology can mirror the intricacies of the human mind. Tess believes it is a hoax, an ingenious way to get the population down to a sustainable level: appealing to desperate people’s need for an escape, inventing a new form of heaven. Their hypothetical debates gain new weight when Ella reveals she, too, wants to leave.

Winter is a Sci-Fi film that is tender, intimate, and relationship-led, but isn’t afraid of grappling with big philosophical themes.

The mind-body problem, credibility of AI, and impending disaster all revolve around the periphery of the piece, but at its core, it is about two girls - two basically sisters - who want the best life for themselves and the other. Heavy topics and heartfelt discussions are stuck through with merciless teasing and constant bickering. The gravity of the questions feel lighter under the gentle, forgiving eye of a friend. 

WINTER asks how we define ourselves through the things we surround ourselves with. Specifically, Winter asks us how we define ourselves through one thing. What is the object we would leave behind when everything else is gone? Central to my vision, then, are things. Clutter and dirt, diamonds and rough. 

Winter takes place in a single location: a house that is part hoarder’s paradise, part post-apocalyptic bunker, part memory of each viewer’s childhood home. In this ransacked shelter, bare-minimum stands next to maximalist luxury and artefacts from thousands of lives - the final evidence of a destroyed humanity. The space will be filled with contradictions and anachronisms; this Sci-Fi is a combination of 1960s space age, the retrofuturism of 1980s dystopias BLADE RUNNER and BRAZIL, the turn of the century whimsy of Jean Pierre Jeunet classics, and magical realist satires of recent releases, HOARD and THE END. 

A domestic dystopia, the house is a female-coded space that inflects our understanding of the traditionally male Sci Fi genre. Winter, despite its title, is a story told by a roaring fire - necessitated by occasional apocalyptic electricity outages, but also connoting comfort, the traditions of the homestead, and a marker memory, of time turning back. Winter will be drawn in the colours of autumn, frames will be composed like interior portraits and still life, and draped with textures, furs, and - again - things, within which our characters are nestled (buried). 

Winter looks like a persian rug. A persian rug, specifically, with moth holes in it. 

Martha Wilson: Director, Co-Producer  

Martha is an emerging female filmmaker who writes and directs original projects and directs on commission. Upon graduating in 2022, Martha jumped into Film & TV: starting as a Trainee Assistant Director, Martha quickly progressed to Production Assistant and Third Assistant Director on The Good Ship Murder. Martha worked as a Director’s Assistant and Development Assistant to Tom Harper and Negeen Yazdi at Popcorn Storm Pictures since 2023, and most recently assisted Harper on the upcoming PEAKY BLINDERS film. Martha is now a Development Coordinator at Popcorn Storm, where she handles Popcorn Storm’s Film and TV slate. Outside of Popcorn Storm, Martha is a short-film maker. Her debut short, SOUL, BABY! (starring BAFTA winner Cathy Tyson), is currently in post-production and set for a summer release, WINTER will be her second directorial outing, and she has just written her next project, BASED ON, IF ANY, an auto-fictional road movie. 

Avania Costello: Writer, Co-Producer, Lead Cast

Avania Costello graduated Oxford in 2024 with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Her writing has been shortlisted for The Avril Bruten Award and published in The Isis Magazine. She enjoys using her background in philosophy to apply philosophical dilemmas to fantastical situations, using magic and playful storytelling to bring previously obscured aspects of reality into relief. While at Oxford, she was also active in the drama community: appearing in numerous plays including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fetid, The House, and After Life. She made her short film debut as the lead in CHERUBS GROW ON TREES (2024). After graduation, she was admitted as a member of the National Youth Theatre. Winter is her debut screenplay, a natural combination of her writing and acting pursuits. 

Alex Hopkins-McQuillan: Producer 

Dublin-born and London-based, Alex is a producer, writer, and director working across narrative films, documentaries, and music videos. Alex is the writer/director of the short film EQUINOX (2025) and, most recently, served as Producer and 1st Assistant Director on the upcoming feature debut from film & theatremaker Jack Sain. Outside of production, Alex is a keen film writer, and his reviews have featured in Little White Lies. He is committed to making and championing work that is innovative, character-driven, and inclusive.

Molly Jones: Lead Cast

Molly received her training at The BRIT School (Musical Theatre) and South London Youth Theatre before completing a degree in English Language and Literature. While at University, Molly took the lead role in multiple theatre productions including An American in Paris (Oxford Playhouse), Amadeus, The Tempest (Oxford Playhouse), Into the Woods, A Girl in School Uniform, and Sweeney Todd. Molly is a classically trained soprano, was Choral Scholar at Keble College, and a member of London Youth Choir’s Chamber Choir. Molly starred in Martha’s short SOUL, BABY! and has just completed shooting for a second short film role, COOL ABOUT IT. 

Keep up to date with the project by following our Instagram! @winterfilm2025

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 25th August 2025 at 9:22am