BAFTA 2025 shorts nominee interviews
Matty Crawford on Stomach bug
In this interview series, we speak to some of the brilliant BAFTA short film nominees across the live action (which includes documentary) and animation categories. We should point out that of the five live action nominees, there is only one woman filmmaker, and the same is the case for the three animation nominees. Overall, that’s just two women filmmakers across a selection of eight films selected for the shortlists. And this is before we even discuss race, class, disability and queerness.
Many people are involved in the making of a film, and so we know that there are racialised and marginalised people in roles that aren’t necessarily listed in an award nomination. However, for there to only be two women directors named across eight nominations in the shorts category isn’t good enough. We hope to see this change in the future.
Matty Crawford
Molly: This story is really relatable (despite the pregannt cis man!). Where did the idea for the film come from?
Matty: The first piece of advice I got about pitching films is to try and open the pitch with something personal. I think it’s easy to passively listen to someone tell you a story, but when someone’s telling you a secret or opening up, that’s when you really lean in and listen. When I pitched this to BBC Films I wrote about how my dad passed away during the pandemic, and me and my brother used the fact that it was a pandemic as a reason to not hold a funeral for him, when actually the reason was we didn't really know any of his friends. They had either moved on and didn’t stay in contact or they had passed away themselves – our dad was an older dad. We couldn't afford a burial so we spread his ashes, and now there’s no physical reminder that my dad existed in this world apart from me and my brother. I was left with this feeling that my dad only existed through us, which was a heavy feeling. But what made me feel better about that was trying to think from my dad’s perspective that someone out there feels better because you existed. And that's essentially what I tried to have this main character learn, that he's not invisible, that he exists, and that he exists through his daughter and the love that she has for him.
The other seed of this idea was something that my mum was going through after my brother, his wife and children moved out of the home they had all shared together and she was experiencing empty nest syndrome. She started working a lot and avoided being at the house because she hated the silence. She would call me a lot during this period and in one of these phone calls she very casually said, “if my body would allow for it, I wonder if I would have another baby so I wouldn't have to be alone all the time.” And then that kind of became the seed that grew into this film.
ML: Is Manny inspired by your dad?
MC: Not really, the inspiration for Manny comes from the wider migrant experience in the UK, especially the Asian experience. It was really important that Manny was Asian and an immigrant because I rarely see an Asian character of that age leading a movie. That feeling of utter invisibility is such a painfully familiar sentiment in the Asian community here, we’ve long thought that keeping our heads down and being invisible might help us gain acceptance in British society.
Stomach Bug
Writer/Director: Matty Crawford
Producers: Karima Sammout-Kanellopoulou
Matty Crawford’s NFTS graduation film, made in partnership with BBC Films, is a psychological and body horror short that tells the story of Manny who is living alone after his daughter moves away for university. Lonely and feeling invisible, he appears to be pregnant. Despite this growth in his stomach, he is turned away by doctors, all the while his daughter is increasingly difficult to get hold of and clearly wanting her own freedom.
The short culminates in a birthing scene that words simply can’t do justice to. It is an incredible feat of prosthetics and clever camera play that achieves its goal of creating deeply uncomfortable, somewhat horrifying, yet extremely moving viewing.
Here, Matty gives Molly Lipson an exclusive insight into a part of the story he’s not yet shared publicly, and chats about the themes of loneliness, isolation and marginalisation that come up in this film.
ML: Before the final scene, Manny is on the phone to his daughter Joy and then switches from speaking to her in English to reeling off a mologue in his native Cantonese. You didn’t add subtitles for this, why not?
MC: I wanted to draw on the generational differences that happen when your children are raised in a new country and don't grow up with their parents’ language. That language barrier between parent and child is something I experienced myself with my mum who’s Filipina and speaks Ilcano, which I don’t speak. When I was in the Philippines with her I noticed how much she could really express herself in her own language, and I got to see a version of her that I just don't have access to here in England. I really wanted to explore that idea in Manny’s final monologue. The disconnect his daughter experiences when he speaks in his native language is then also shared by the audience.
ML: All of the locations felt super small and enclosed. What was the reasoning behind this choice?
MC: I always see films with a working class character that has a massive home, which I assume is because the filmmakers needed to fit the crew and camera kit. But it directly contradicts the actual characters, background and story, so with this film we decided to make it more realistic. We were also very intentional about finding locations without natural light. The only time Manny’s in natural daylight is when he’s outdoors walking down the street to the hospital, and even then it’s overcast. We wanted to create this oppressiveness and maintain this texture that made his environment seem harsh.
Catherine Frawley
ML: The prosthetics in the film are pretty wild. How did you not only find someone for that but fund it?
MC: I met our prosthetics designer on a feature when I was shadowing the director and became obsessed with his work. Luckily he was up for being involved in Stomach Bug when the time came, and yes, we definitely spent a significant amount of our budget on prosthetics. Our total was £40,000 which was funded by an NFTS and BBC Films fund.
ML: Are you excited for the BAFTA ceremony?
MC: Yeah, I’m mainly excited to bring my mum, it's always been a dream to bring her to a red carpet. She doesn't come from the creative industries so anytime I tell her about a big festival or something it doesn’t mean that much to her, but when I told her about the BAFTAs, she definitely knew what it was!
Anastasia A Arsentyeva
Catherine Frawley