“This movie should be in everyone's home. It should be super accessible. Our absolute goal would be a streamer like Netflix,” actress-turned-director Pippa Bennett-Warner (Gangs of London) tells me about the perfect location for his directorial debut 22+1which aired this week on London Film Festival.
It's not uncommon for me to hear such statements from a director, but Bennett-Warner and her creative partner Pippa Vosper are fueled by a unique set of ambitions.
22+1 short film project written by Bennett-Warner and Vosper with screenwriter Kefi Chadwick (Rivals). Vosper, an experienced writer and fashion editor, also came up with the original idea. The story is based on research Vosper conducted for her 2022 book. Beyond Grief: A Journey Through Pregnancy and Child Loss, written after her son Axel died after being born at 20 weeks in 2017.
“400 women were the subjects of research for my book,” explains Vosper. “And the more I talked to people across the country, the more similarities I found with women of color who were telling stories that were too similar to be coincidental.”
Indeed, across the UK, black women are more than twice as likely to die in childbirth compared to their white peers, while babies born to black mothers face a dramatically increased risk of stillbirth. In the United States, black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the CDC. That's where 22+1 begins with Ruby, played by Bennett-Warner, trying to cope with the grief of a late-term pregnancy loss while experiencing the hidden racism in the healthcare system.
Vosper explains that she felt a responsibility to go public with her findings, but knew she couldn't tell the story only as a white woman.
“I needed to find the right person to work with so that I could take the story of losing a child to someone who could hold it sacred, but also tell it from a statistical and realistic perspective,” says Vosper.
That's when she turned to Bennett-Warner, who stars in the Sky crime drama. Gangs of London, Look how they run (2022) and recent Netflix thriller Woman in cabin 10.
“Pippa called me one day and said, 'I think you should make a film.' I’m so grateful to her for that because now I can’t imagine moving forward without directing being a part of my life,” says Bennett-Warner.
“We had an amazing team. Dan Smith from Bastille, a friend of mine, wrote the original song and composed the score. Francine Leach was my editor and she just knocked it out of the park. I had the opportunity to work with Oliver Tarney, a five-time Academy Award nominated sound designer. It was the most brilliant creative process.”
Vosper notes that she and her team spent four years raising funds for the project. Michael J. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli EON Productions is co-producing the project with Pip Pip Productions. Vosper was the lead producer, and her company 3A Productions is the full rights holder. Vosper says that during her first job as a film producer, the process was one of the most enjoyable of her career, but she was also pleasantly surprised by the “moments of misogyny” throughout the process.
“That’s the only thing that surprised me, and I’ve been in the magazine territory for so long. I started working at iD magazine once with Edward Enninful, and that’s how long I’ve been working there,” she says.
The film was shown to a group of senior UK health officials, including Kate Brintworth, England's chief obstetrician, at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital before LFF. The UK's National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system, has now submitted a request to purchase the film as an internal training resource.
“We're currently working on a way to do this so that the film can serve as a teaching tool for maternity services,” says Vosper.
British Health Secretary Wes Streeting also contacted the crew.
“The question now is when we will show it in Parliament,” explains Vosper. “We are also speaking to Baroness Amos, whom we met a couple of weeks ago. She is now leading the inquiry into maternal trauma, with a particular focus on disparities and disparities among black and mixed heritage in maternity services. She has ideas about how we can work together when the inquiry concludes in the spring.”
Vosper and Bennett-Warner are now looking at “territory expansion” with the goal of using this story to highlight how the same issues are affecting health systems around the world.
“If we can get this movie on a streaming platform or terrestrial channel, it will allow people to understand what's going on, and that's what we want from this story,” concludes Vosper.
The LFF will end tomorrow, October 19.
