LAYKE ANDERSON
Layke Anderson is a multi-award-winning London-based filmmaker whose work circles the complex nature of grief and resilience, animal instinct, the ghost of the soul, and love; tender, violent, and everything between. His background in acting brings a nuanced perspective to his directorial work, with a distinct sensitivity to character and an irreverence toward genre. His short films dare to ask the big questions, often exploring philosophical themes while gently probing life’s absurdities and earning comparisons from critics to the poetic lyricism of Terrence Malick and the bold experimentalism of Gaspar Noé.
Anderson's filmmaking journey began with Dylan's Room, a project financed with a lot of love and a little late-night pint-pulling that went on to star BAFTA winner Joanna Scanlan. The film won numerous awards before it was long-listed for a BAFTA and later nominated for a British Independent Film Award. This early success set the stage for other acclaimed shorts like Happy Thoughts (a take on the Peter Pan love triangle) and Shopping (philosophy in a Soho sex shop), both of which picked up awards and secured distribution. The latter was included in the anthology London Unplugged, which received a theatrical release in Everyman cinemas and at the ICA.
Subsequent projects continued to explore diverse themes, with Epilogue (a single, unbroken take capturing the unraveling of a woman’s psyche following an act of violence) and the queer sci-fi drama Mankind (about a young man who yearns to leave the Earth). The latter premiered at BFI Flare and was later released on Mubi and BFI Player. Collectively, these visceral journeys through what we call "the human experience" have screened at over 150 international film festivals, securing distribution across television, cinema, and the strange democracy of airline entertainment.
Having never fit neatly into any category (neither penurious nor privileged enough to align with the archetype of filmmaker whose projects easily secure outside support), Anderson considers his unique vantage point one that encourages innovation and ensures each film carries not just authenticity but an urgency born of necessity.
Before wrestling with existence behind the camera, he briefly flirted with the other side of the lens, working with filmmakers like Danny Boyle and the late Sir Richard Attenborough. And while his most prominent role (starring in a 2009 Luxembourg/Amsterdam/Morocco set feature film as a runaway rebel teen-turned stripper, opposite Udo Kier, Stephen Fry, and a then unknown Vicky Krieps) earned favourable reviews (a critic generously deemed his performance "worthy of an Oscar"), Anderson made a full recovery from the acting bug, and shifted his focus to working behind the scenes. He worked as a session director for casting director Dan Hubbard (casting film projects for Guy Ritchie) and later as a crowd director on Francis Lee's Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet.
Anderson’s current obsession is SWƎƎT BRO†HER, a wholly independent feature film made outside the machinery of the industry, crowdfunded with support from John Cameron Mitchell, Stephen Fry and Rose McGowan among others. The film was shaped not by ego or career strategy, but by compulsion; the kind of creative hunger that makes a person choose solitude over safety, vision over validation. A brutal fairytale for a world that's forgotten how to dream, SWƎƎT BRO†HER is currently in the twilight of post-production.
His path has never been linear: Barcelona, Paris, New York, Buenos Aires; studying, drifting, working jobs that barely sound real (a gaucho rider in Paraguay at seventeen, modelling for L’Uomo Vogue in Sicily at twenty, personal trainer for a pop star, a lifeguard, a barber, a men's stylist, acting coach, etc). The result is style of filmmaking that thrives on mischief, invention, and disregard for the rulebook.
Anderson owes nothing to convention and everything to experience.