Two Year 12 Media Studies students, Sophie Siebert and Jasmine Zhou, entered the international Focus on Ability short film competition with a film called “ Hear Us to Understand”.

They based their documentary style film on the experiences of Year 11 student Cariad Anglesey. The film was one of ten to gain a highly commended out of nearly 80 accepted for the competition. The link to their film is here:

Here is Sophie’s introduction -

Our school's film Hear Us To Understand was highly commended in the NOVA Employment 2022 Focus On Ability Short Film Awards.

Focus on Ability (FOA) is designed to encourage filmmakers to focus on the ability of people with disability. This year they’re celebrating 14 years of doing just that!

Based in Australia, this year’s FOA festival Schools section had an amazing 74 finalists from Australia and New Zealand.

Our statement of intent!

We thought that Cariad's experiences were really interesting and we wanted to get a better understanding of what it was like for them and how they coped with their disabilities. Cariad was really open about how they operate and we loved chatting with them about how different people act or help them. They had lots of detailed descriptions of what they felt and our conversations were very informative. We wanted to enhance everything they described so that other people could better understand their unique condition. It opened our eyes to what they were experiencing and got us thinking about the best way to tell their story. The intent of the film was to showcase Cariad's journey with these disabilities. We wanted to highlight the struggles they experience, but also how they have dealt with it. Cariad's story was moving and it is our hope that other people will be more considerate of people who may experience the same things as them.