Mode Insurance Client Q&A: The Story Behind Short-Film “Unauthorised Absence”
At Mode Insurance, we are proud to have the filmmakers behind the short film “Unauthorised Absence” as clients. We love seeing the work our clients create, so we wanted to learn more about this powerful project and share the story behind it.
Written by Jo Clayton, directed by Georgia Parris and produced by Natalie Lauren, Unauthorised Absence follows a mother fighting to protect her nine-year-old daughter from an education system that mistakes distress for defiance. Drawing on the lived experiences of hundreds of families, the film explores the reality facing parents whose children genuinely cannot attend school, but who find themselves facing fines and the threat of prosecution while struggling to access support.
We spoke to the film's producer Natalie about the inspiration for the film, casting its central characters and balancing creative ambition with the practical realities of an independent production. She also shares advice for first-time filmmakers, explains where to prioritise a limited budget and discusses why having the right insurance gave the team the confidence to focus on bringing this important story to the screen.
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Unauthorised Absence is a short film about a mother fighting to protect her nine-year-old daughter from an education system that mistakes distress for defiance, and proceeds to punish them when she cannot go to school.
It stars Emily Bruni and Beatrice Flaherty, with performances from Cathy Tyson and Anna Maxwell Martin. It is written by Jo Clayton, directed by Georgia Parris, and produced by Natalie Lauren; the executive producers are Alix Wilton Regan, Jennifer English, Hugh Viney and Anna Maxwell Martin.
Watch a special behind the scenes video of the making of Unauthorised Absence:
Q: Where did the original idea for the film come from?
A: The idea came from seeing that there was a really profound injustice happening when families, whose children genuinely could not attend school, were being fined and threatened with prosecution, often while desperately trying to access support for those same children. So much of the public conversation around attendance fines was about truancy or term-time holidays, which seemed to completely miss these families and children were being lost through the gaps.
Writer Jo Clayton first encountered that through her own lived experience, but quickly realised through parent communities that this was happening on a huge scale. She talks about feeling like everyone was “screaming into the void”. The film became a way of showing what was actually happening behind the statistics, to try and get through to policymakers that this system not only isn’t working but is causing a huge amount of harm. In that way, isn’t one family’s story, it’s been shaped by hundreds of different experiences that share remarkably similar patterns.
Q: What made you feel this particular story was best suited to the short film format?
A: The crux of the film is that things are happening at home, and internally for both mum and daughter, that the school, health service and local authority simply don’t see. It’s less about what is said than what is felt: sensory overwhelm, the impact of an endless stream of meetings and phone calls, pressure and a sense of blame quietly accumulating.
You can understand these things academically by hearing or reading someone talk about it, but film lets us play with sound, framing and editing to place the audience inside that experience, to empathise and understand it emotionally instead. Short film particularly gave us permission to make it very concentrated and quite fragmented: with memories and moments overlapping and resurfacing in snapshots, rather than everything unfolding neatly and sequentially. There’s something really powerful about asking somebody to inhabit that world intensely for just fifteen minutes, and then hopefully carrying that feeling into the conversation afterwards.
Q: How did you approach casting, and what were you looking for from the performers?
A: Casting was driven by authenticity and lived experience from the start. We wanted people who understood the world of the film, connected with why we were making it, and could bring real empathy and truth to it. It’s testament to how widespread the issue is that finding people with a connection to the themes was surprisingly easy!
The brilliant Emma Sylvester led our casting, shaped by her wealth of experience working established actors, brand-new actors, and, importantly, child actors too. Across the cast, many characters only have a few lines and less than minute on screen but we needed them to make us believe in them as a whole person, with their own pressures and expectations to manage. That’s really hard to do.
Finding Thea, the young child at the heart of the film, was our biggest and most important challenge - the character has an enormous but often very quiet internal world, so that performance needed a huge amount of subtlety and maturity from a young, maybe brand new, actor. Emma ran an open call, receiving well over 3500 submissions and inviting hundreds self tapes across all our roles. We met a short list of about 12 potential Thea’s in person, so they had a chance to get to know the team and work with an actor on a version of Thea’s morning routine.
Q: How did you balance creative ambition with the realities of producing an independent short film?
A: It involved being very clear about what was essential to the film, and asking for a lot of favours! Georgia (Director), Jo (Writer) and I (Producer) went through the script in detail, constantly asking what each element was doing and whether it justified the time and money it would take to achieve. Some things had to go: a brief scene on a moving London bus, for example, became disproportionately expensive. Other things, like prosthetics or the specific vintage lenses we wanted, felt fundamental to the film, so we begged, borrowed and found a way.
Luckily, some creative choices worked in our favour. The predominantly handheld approach meant we could move quickly, and by cutting and grouping the script carefully we were able to shoot it all in four days. The key was being ambitious about the things that mattered, realistic about everything else. We were also always very open with the whole team about those decisions, so everyone understood and supported why they were made.
Q: What advice would you give to someone preparing to make their first short film?
A: Make the most of what you already have available to you - maybe that’s a location, a prop, an experience you know really well. Preferably all three! Keep the scale manageable too. Your first short will teach you an enormous amount, so don’t make life harder with endless locations, huge crowd scenes, complicated effects or a 20-page script.
For me, surround yourself with people who are brilliant at the things you don’t know was very important. I came from acting, so I understood story, performance and how sets worked, but knew far less about cameras, lighting or data. Finding collaborators I could trust and learn from was invaluable.
And know your film inside out so you can plan thoroughly. If you understand why every detail is there, you can communicate that vision clearly, and help everyone work towards the same film.
Other than that: get insurance, have qualified first aiders (and first aid kits) on set, and more water and snacks than you think!
Q: Where do you think filmmakers should prioritise their budget when resources are limited?
A: Great question - and it really depends on the film. Camera and lenses can be hugely important, but if you’re making a 90s found-footage film, you might be better off spending that money on production design. Another film might live or die on one location, a custom prop or a particular VFX sequence.
Resources are always limited. Always. So the job is to work out what your film’s non-negotiables are (the elements it simply won’t work without) and protect the budget there.
With Unauthorised Absence, our biggest spends were locations, camera and cast. That’s because it’s a performance-led, social-realist film, so it couldn’t just feel real, it had to be real. The visual approach was deliberately intimate and observational, and the performances needed to feel completely grounded.
Q: Are there any tools, platforms or resources that proved particularly useful during the project?
A: Other providers are available and these are not all perfect, but during Unauthorised Absence I was constantly using Google Drive for file sharing, Kickstarter for crowdfunding, ShotDeck for visual references, DaVinci Resolve for testing out editing ideas or making a pitch video, and Instagram and Facebook for community-building, which all proved incredibly useful.
And then, of course, email and messaging - constant communication!
Probably the most valuable resource was other filmmakers. I regularly lean on filmmaking communities to ask questions, find recommendations and learn from people who’ve already solved the problem I’m facing. I’m also a big fan of filmmaking podcasts and festivals: any opportunity to hear people talk openly about how they got their films made is enormously useful and interesting to me!
Q: Why was it important for you to have the right insurance in place?
A: Mostly so I didn’t get sued or go bankrupt! More seriously, having the right insurance gave us huge peace of mind. Independent filmmaking has a lot of moving parts, and things can go wrong: someone can get injured, kit can be damaged, locations can get damaged, or plans can suddenly fall through.
Insurance is also often required for locations, permits, equipment hire and other production agreements, so having the right cover in place allows everyone to work with confidence and make life easier. It means that if something unexpected does happen, neither the production nor an individual is left carrying an impossible risk. Ultimately, that safety net lets you concentrate on the thing you’re actually there to do: make a brilliant film!
Q: What has the response been from people who have seen the film so far?
A: The full film hasn’t been seen publicly yet, so we’re still waiting for that moment! But we did release a short scene as part of an ITV News interview at the end of August, and the response was extraordinary. We’ve had hundreds of comments and messages from people saying they felt as though the scene had been lifted directly from their own lives, or telling us how important it was to see this experience represented on screen. Perhaps most encouragingly, people are asking when they can see the rest of it! For such a small glimpse of the film to resonate so strongly has been incredibly moving, and has made us even more excited, and eager, to finally share the whole thing.
Q: Where can people watch the film and follow its progress?
A: We’re working that out right now! Our priority is to make the film as accessible as possible, and to give it the best chance of having a real impact: not just reaching audiences, but contributing to conversations around education policy and change. The current plan includes festivals, accessible screenings, educational events and policy conversations.
In the meantime, the best place to follow the film’s journey and hear about release plans is Instagram or Facebook at @unauthorisedabsencefilm.
All photographs credited to Ben Peter Catchpole.
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Written by
Luke Glassford
Head of Marketing
Any views or opinions expressed above are for guidance only and are expressed in generic terms. They are not intended as a substitute for readers taking appropriate professional advice relevant to individual circumstances.
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