The Fashion in Film Festival, the UAL Central Saint Martins-based non-profit, is back with its 2025 edition, Grounded: Fashion’s Entanglements with Nature, supported by the BFI. The programme explores fashion’s complex relationship with the natural world and addresses pressing ecological crises through cinema.
Spanning early 20th century works to contemporary productions, GROUNDED features over 30 films across documentary, fiction, experimental, and fashion cinema, examining fashion as both barrier and bridge between humans and nature. The programme blends narratives of ecology and geopolitics with poetry, comedy, beauty, horror, and transgression.
Co-curators Marketa Uhlirova and Dal Chodha said: “The festival highlights cinema as a multisensory tool to rethink how fashion interacts with the non-human world. In curating these films, we’ve sought to care for them like gardeners tend trees, growing new ideas and hope for the future.”
The UK-wide tour runs September–October at key independent arts venues including Watershed Bristol, Arnolfini Bristol, Exeter Phoenix, Plymouth Arts Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts (in partnership with V&A Dundee), Eden Court Inverness, Glasgow Film Theatre, and Garnet Hill Multicultural Centre. The festival also partners with V&A Dundee for their Garden Futures: Designing with Nature exhibition.
Committed to inclusivity, the festival offers accessible screenings for underrepresented groups, including a community screening at Garnet Hill Multicultural Centre.
John McKnight, BFI audiences manager, said: “We’re pleased to support this culturally ambitious festival. With fashion and the environment at its heart, the programme’s diverse films and strong curatorial voice will attract new audiences to independent cinema.”
UK Programme Highlights:
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Sacred Transmission: Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo and Spanish filmmaker Rocío Mesa explore gods and spirits inhabiting the natural world, curated by Christel Tsilibaris.
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Ready-to-wear Landscapes: In partnership with Trash Club’s Matthew Needham, the programme investigates clothing production, distribution, and ‘waste colonialism,’ highlighting creative responses to the climate crisis.
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Cartographies of Memory: Danish-Trinidadian artist Jeannette Ehlers uses Black hair to examine colonialism, history, and place, followed by a conversation with British curator Karen Alexander.
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Dust to Dust (Kosai Sekine, 2023): Tracks fabric from Kenyan landfills to Paris runways.
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We Are All Chimeras: Shorts and a talk by CSM Senior Lecturer Margarita Louca explore nonhuman or hybrid states to examine identity, ecology, and society.
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The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018): The first feature from the experimental filmmaker celebrated for her vibrant, handmade 16mm films.
The London leg featured silent films with live scores by Musarc, UK premieres including Alexandra Gulea’s Maia: A Portrait with Hands (2024), archival restorations like The Dancing Fleece (1950), and a rare screening of Ogawa collective’s Raising Silkworms (1977).
