Director's Works
Lauren Maya Davis is an award-winning British Writer-Director based between London and California. She is a self-taught writer dedicated to exploring feeling and human empathy both viscerally on the page and then developed further for screen. She has a degree in Motion Graphic and Film Design, and studied Cinematography at the American Film Institute. Her work has been awarded bronze at the 2024 CICLOPE Festival in Berlin, best short film at select US film festivals, and she is part of the SHOOT 2024 22nd Annual New Directors Showcase.
Born from personal experience working with children and rescued wolves, Songbirds is a short film crafted around poignant moments and loosely based on scenes from the award-winning novel Theft by American writer BK Loren. The story follows a young incarcerated man who travels inward to explore his younger self. “When developing the visual language for Songbirds, I did a deep dive researching historical photography from the South and Japanese black and white cinema, so once I locked the script, we committed to a ten day shoot to make sure we had time to explore the visual poetry in camera. I spent three months in the Mississippi Delta scouting local terrain and casting more than 400 children at local schools and churches, and through this process the project developed in an incredibly beautiful way. The project was a true collaborative project with the local community and I think we succeeded in creating something visually and emotionally provocative”.