“Puffling captures the space between”: Jessica Bishopp on directing Puffling, Film Festivals and Directors UK Inspire

A beautifully subtle and moving story of adolescence, interwoven with an important environmental narrative, Puffling by Directors UK member Jessica Bishopp, had its world premiere at SXSW 2023 and won the Jury Award for Documentary at the Oscar-Qualifying Aspen Shortsfest 2023.

Here, we speak to Jessica about the inspiration behind Puffling, its film festival success, plus what drew her to the Directors UK Inspire Scheme.

Let’s start at the beginning – why did you decide to make Puffling, and how did you first discover Birta and Selma’s story?

I’ve known Birta and Selma (who are the main two contributors in the film) for over three years. I first met Birta and Selma through a mutual friend, Hind, who is from the Icelandic island community, and I heard about the natural phenomena and tradition of the puffling (adolescent puffins) season whilst on a long bus journey where Hind and I kept ourselves occupied by sharing stories of home.

I discovered the wonder of birds on walks I took with my dad. Every time we heard or saw a new bird, he'd tell me about them. Their stories offered new perspectives on the world; often transporting me to new spaces and places - like the migrant swift or cuckoo who travel from Africa to the UK every year. However, I quickly learned that many of these birds have precarious existences, and they all have the potential to disappear.

Iceland has the world's largest puffin population; over half of the world’s puffin population breeds in Iceland and the puffins on the island of Vestmannaeyjar (where we made the film) far outnumber the humans. But this is constantly changing, and I have witnessed ever-changing puffling seasons and constant disruption for the wildlife on the island caused by various tensions including industry, humans and warming sea temperatures as a result of climate change. Puffins are most at risk due to these issues.

During “puffling season”, the adolescent puffins are leaving the nest for the first time and are making their way out to sea by following the moonlight in order to transition into adults. However, they get distracted by harbour lights and lost in town so, during the puffling season, young people go out at night and rescue the birds. When I heard about this, I immediately connected with the story on many levels and could see that the puffins were going through their own coming-of-age story.

By paralleling the teenagers’ experience with the puffling experience through coming-of-age, this film demonstrates the direct connection and interplay between nature, the environment and human life. It also explores important themes relating to contemporary youth acting on global issues, whilst also battling against the universal struggles of adolescence and growing up. Puffling is an alternative perspective on climate change; I wanted to tell a creative and joyful story from the personal perspective of teenagers on the climate change front-line, rather than an expert-led information piece.

Tell me about the timeline for making Puffling – what were the challenges of shooting over puffling season, and during COVID?

Puffling season is a natural phenomenon occurring once a year, for a couple of weeks in August and September. The film turned out to be a little different from the initial concept and filmic treatment; I originally intended the film to be shot entirely in one year, to focus on one puffling season and the small changes within it. However, after various pandemic-related delays (including one cancelled shoot in 2020) we ended up shooting across two years and two puffling seasons (2021 and 2022), maintaining the natural progression of one night as much as possible through the film edit. These shoots were all enabled by our wonderful funders and supportive executive producers, including IF/Then, Field of Vision (FoV), Emergence magazine and Rooftop Films.

The film has a distinct look, with a beautiful use of natural light – tell me about your thought process for creating Puffling’s visual identity.

I worked very closely with cinematographer Anna MacDonald. Anna and I have collaborated before on other projects, such as the short documentary Skyward (viewable online through The Guardian Documentaries). Anna is a very intuitive and sensitive cinematographer, she’s incredible at working with natural light and practicals, and captures people, their faces and expressions so well. It was also important for this intimate shoot that we all got along and had a great relationship with Birta and Selma, as for days it was just Anna, myself and the young women driving around the island and hanging out (obviously with their parents informed consent and permission).

The intention of the film was to have a cinema verité approach for the main story of the puffling rescue happening over one night, interwoven with lyrical and cinematic visuals, exploring intimate accounts from the teenagers Birta and Selma; their personal backstories, what they want their life to be like in the future and how saving the environment might impact their lives, inspired by The Hottest August (dir. Brett Story), and Bombay Beach (dir. Alma Har’el). Throughout the film, we parallel the lives of the puffins in the remote environment with that of the teenagers’ lives, inspired by Island of The Hungry Ghosts (2018) which mirrors the natural migration of the crabs and the lack of movement for refugees on Christmas Island.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening, (2018) by director RaMell Ross was a huge influence for the “moments” and “glimpses” of the girls’ lives and the overlapping and tactile sound design - in Puffling, we have long audio transitions where sounds slip and slide underneath images to evoke the feeling of a tapestry. All these evocative films - Island of the Hungry Ghosts, Bombay Beach and Hale County This Morning, This Evening - are essentially about place and how people are imbued by and embedded within them.

The film ranges from intimate night-time car rides looking for pufflings, to wide rolling scenery. How did you set out to capture your fantastic footage?

I developed the relationship with Selma and Birta through many Zoom calls and messages; collaborating with them to tell their stories and inviting them into the creative process, to ensure the story told is both something they're comfortable with and is authentic to their lives. We would discuss together what we could film. During our first shoot, we primarily focused on filming puffling season at night, and a few things happening during the daytime which were central to the girls’ lives at the time. Then, on the second shoot, we had edited a rough assembly of the footage we already had, so I could have a clearer idea of what the film needed. During the second shoot, we also focused on capturing scenes during the day which reflected Birta and Selma’s lives and stories, focusing on the ways their stories mirrored the puffins. So, for Birta it was mainly about how the environmental changes could impact her family life and for Selma it was about her decision to leave the island.

Puffling includes voiceover narration – was it always your plan to have this as part of the story?

I wanted to use the narration to frame the scenes but not push or lead them. I learned a lot through the making of my previous film Skyward, and I had started developing a style which I wanted to explore more through Puffling. The action, character and space are telling the story and guided by sparse words which invite us deeper into the inner worlds of Birta and Selma, as well as poetically delivering crucial information about the puffins. The words are sparse and carefully chosen; taken from several hours of recorded conversations during our 2021 and 2022 shoots.

The documentary also has a wonderful score – tell us about how that came about.

The beautiful original music is composed by Jófríður Ákadóttir. She is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist known as JFDR. I was very lucky she said yes to this project, as she was in the middle of writing a new album, prepping to go on tour, and composing for TV. We had a call and Jófríður immediately understood the project and what composition was needed, but it took a while to persuade her to agree.

JFDR’s music is ethereal, full of longing, has both essences of girlhood / adolescence and underlying darkness - it was what I envisioned for our film. The music needed to feel bittersweet, dream-like, have elements of dark surrealism, ethereal and whisper-y, with scatterings of joy and playful essences - Jófríður intuitively understood this.

Tell us about the edit process, how did the film take shape in the cutting room?

Puffling captures the space between; it’s a film about place, belonging, and becoming. There are four characters in the film: Birta and Selma, the pufflings and the island, Vestmannaeyjar. Birta and Selma, like the pufflings, are in a transitional period of their lives with choices to make and challenges to overcome. It is a deliberately quiet film, where we are invited to spend time with the young women. The film touches upon psycho-geography and explores their personal connection to place; the young women clearly have a special relationship to the island they grew up on and the film attempts to document the ways in which their surroundings influence them. We also witness their innate relationship with wildlife.

Trying to include all these layers and storylines in the film was a creative challenge, and it was all about creating the right balance between all the elements. I collaborated with editor Xanna Ward Dixon. Xanna immediately understood the film we wanted to make; the creative vision and this unique style-of-storytelling. She brought an integral new, clear, and creative perspective to the film. I wanted to bring a lot of narrative, character development and creative layers and complexity to this short film, maintaining a constant feeling of narrative progression.

Working with Xanna, we were able to draw this out of the rushes and find a way to balance all these elements in the twenty-minute short film. We created and set ourselves our own rules for the film and the edit; around how the voiceover would be used, the transitions between night and day, how the daytime footage could be used and also what would maintain the sense of progression and of “one night” throughout the film, dipping in and out of Birta and Selma’s personal lives outside the puffling rescues.

What, for you, was the most rewarding part of making Puffling?

Meeting Birta and Selma and their families. It is an honour to be invited into someone's life.

It has also been rewarding to work with so many talented and creative people to bring this film to life. It has been a true collaboration and I learned something from everyone who worked on the film, including producers Gannesh Rajah and Alice Hughes, who have always believed in the film, and co-producer Ada Benjamínsdóttir.

Puffling has had a fantastic festival run, with your World Premiere at SXSW, a recent Oscar-qualifying award win at Aspen, a European Premiere at Galway Film Fleadh and your New York Premiere coming up. How has it been to navigate that as a director – what has been the high point, and what have you learned from it as a director?

It doesn’t feel like I’m navigating it as a director, it’s really been a team effort and therefore we’ve been able to celebrate and share all the highs (and lows) together. The high point was when we showed the film to Birta and Selma and their families and they loved it! They were taking photos of the film and screenshots - they felt seen, and they saw themselves in the film.

That said, it was a dream to go to SXSW (supported by the British Council - thank you!) as a team. SXSW is a huge international platform. It felt amazing to have our work recognised, and to celebrate the film we've been making for the last four years - never quite knowing if it would ever see the light of day. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Aspen Shortsfest when the film won the Oscar-qualifying Jury Award for Documentary, but I was honoured to be able to give an acceptance speech remotely – I was so nervous!

Not long after shooting and editing Puffling, you joined Directors UK Inspire – our director-to-director mentoring scheme. Why did you decide to apply?

I am interested in developing both fiction and documentary work and it's really hard to navigate the industry, keep momentum and create opportunities for yourself as a director. I thought I would benefit from a mentor to bounce ideas off and learn from. I was really fortunate when director Stella Corradi agreed to be my mentor, as I've been following her work from her short film (Little Solider) to Killing Eve. You can generally find us huddled over coffees at BAFTA Piccadilly - we’ve discussed how to progress in the industry and develop as a director, and she's even generously given me feedback on my films and my writing.

Now looking ahead to the future: what’s coming up next for you?

Puffling is currently going to film festivals, and I am trying to attend as many festivals as possible (time and finances permitting) and take part in all the Q&As; I feel humbled by the impact Puffling is having on people and I feel so lucky that film festivals and programmers are keen to share our film with their audiences.

I have recently written my first fiction short film and I am in the process of making this, together with producer Olwyn Fagan (who my Directors UK Inspire mentor Stella Corradi introduced me to). I am also developing several long-form projects, including a couple of documentary features and a feature fiction film which I am very excited about!

Puffling has its New York premiere on Friday 4 August at Rooftop Films' Summer Series alongside Sundance-award winning feature film Scrapper directed by Charlotte Regan.

Directors UK Inspire is a year-round, director-on-director mentoring scheme which accepts applications from members and more experienced directors working in a similar field.

You can meet our current Inspire cohort here.