StudioGildaFILMS
Who We Are
StudioGilda was founded in 2025, by writer and director John Roberts, and producers Nisha Banga and James Bettaney. It is based both in London and the West Midlands. The studio’s first film, the 35 minute short, The Verge (2025), was independently funded. Distribution for the film is currently being arranged.
StudioGilda is committed to a range of modes of storytelling, that cross film as theatre and the intersection of documentary voices and fiction. it is currently involved in preproduction for a first feature, a historical drama set in 1649, just after the English Civil War.
Precision Filmmaking Rooted in Expertise
The Verge is a 35-minute film, set in a North London funeral parlour, written and directed by John Roberts and filmed by James Alexander Barnett. It consists of an extended soliloquy/lament by a middle-aged black woman, Magdalene (Tonia Daley-Campbell), for her adopted white brother, Thomas, who lies on a bier in the space. The form and structure are Greek-classical (Pericles, Aeschylus), the lighting and décor minimalist, the language, poetically inflected North London working class. Magdalene, distraught and unconsolable calls up the painful memory of her brother and the love of her dead mother.
