Jesse Lewis-Reece's new tricks

Creative energy, imagination and ambition: most young directors have these qualities in spades, and Jesse Lewis-Reece is no exception. 

But the Brighton-born, London-based writer-director also has a keen sense of empathy and humility – traits that tend to be learned and earned over decades behind the lens, not a handful of years. 

Lewis-Reece treats complex and sensitive subject-matter with a delicate touch.

Whether it’s the rise and fall of a relationship corroded by obsessive-compulsive disorder; a trans man navigating a new identity in an old life; or a young woman confronting a future without sight, Lewis-Reece treats complex and sensitive subject-matter with a delicate touch and a deep maturity that belies his status as a new director. 

Above: Director Jesse Lewis-Reece.

The advertising industry is sitting up and taking note of Lewis-Reece's qualities following a slew of YDA wins and a BAFTA nomination. He was also awarded Best New Director of the Year at the British Arrows in 2023.

Though much of Lewis-Reece’s work explores marginalised communities and voices, this was never his motivation to direct. “I wouldn’t say I dived into filmmaking from a perspective of wanting to tackle disabilities,” he says. “It’s more that each project has led me to be trusted to work with people from these backgrounds, to create stories that resonate.”

Though much of Lewis-Reece’s work explores marginalised communities and voices, this was never his motivation to direct.

In fact, his first experience behind the camera was making skate films in his hometown of Brighton, inspired by the cheap videos he’d pick up from skate shops, which featured local talent. “They had a real artistic flair to them,” he remembers. “Each person's part would have a song that reflected their personality, and the edit would be really beautifully done.” As the self-confessed “worst on the board” out of his group of friends, the task of documenting fell to Lewis-Reece, and he soon realised he preferred filming to skating.

Above: Lewis-Reece's graduation film, BLEACH, was a success at festivals but didn't quite kickstart his career. 

He went on to study film at Bournemouth Film School, flying out of the traps with his graduation film BLEACH, an intense, unflinching look at a trans man’s struggle for acceptance after returning to the town and family he left under mysterious circumstances. 

It swept the festival awards circuit, “then I had that lull, where you come out of university and you're like: “I'm a filmmaker!”… but you quickly realise that you're not, and you have to go back to reality,” he laughs. Tail between his legs, he headed back to Brighton and took up a job editing commercials.    

"I had that lull, where you come out of university and you're like: “I'm a filmmaker!”… but you quickly realise that you're not."

A couple of years later, following the well-trodden path of fledgling directors, Lewis-Reece decided to quit his job and move to London, but not before spending the last of his savings making a second short film, Eyelash – an achingly beautiful adaptation of Neil Hilborn’s viral poem, OCD. Shot through the eyes of a sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the film tracks the corrosive effects of the condition on a young couple, deftly capturing how once-endearing rituals – switching lights on and off, stepping over cracks - begin, inexorably, to eat away at the foundations of their bond.

Above: Before heading to London Lewis-Reece ploughed the last of his savings into making Eyelash. 

Ironically, for a story about the demise of a relationship, Eyelash marked the beginning of a love affair with the one-person perspective, character-driven filmmaking which has gone on to become Lewis-Reece’s directorial hallmark. “I love putting the audience in the shoes of a particular character. When you've got a one-person perspective, it really helps inform all your decisions and gives you a great grip on the story. It always gives me the answer to the question: why am I doing what I’m doing?” he explains.

Eyelash might have cost him his last few pennies, but it proved to be a sound investment, winning him five golds at the YDA plus a BAFTA nomination, and propelling him into the advertising world. “That was the short film that really opened doors for me: people started looking at me as a director,” he says.

"When you've got a one-person perspective, it really helps inform all your decisions and gives you a great grip on the story."

After shooting a couple of charity films, including This is Social Work for children’s outreach organisation Frontline, he got “a lucky opportunity” to pitch on a major league spot for the RNIB and The&Partnership against several more established directors, thanks to ECD Toby Allen, who’d been a judge at Kinsale Sharks where Eyelash won the Grand Prix. 

“He threw my name into the hat as he felt that my work and sensibilities combined really well with the script,” says Lewis-Reece. “Particularly with the approach I’d taken for Eyelash and the OCD community; the agency and client thought it would be interesting to see if I could do a similar thing for a different community.”

Above: Lewis-Reece's spot for children’s outreach organisation, Frontline.

A stark portrayal of the impact of sight loss, the film is told from the perspective of a fictional young woman, Ava, who’s diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa - a progressive condition ultimately leading to blindness. The campaign’s aim was to challenge outdated public attitudes and misconceptions towards blind and partially sighted people, contributed to in part by negative depictions on film over the years. 

“They’re often portrayed as villains: think of James Bond. Or it's the complete opposite: old and frail,” points out Lewis-Reece. “With Ava, who clearly goes through a lot of trauma, it was her strength [the client] wanted to emphasise.” Painful realities are not shied away from, but ultimately, the message is one of hope and resilience.

“[Blind and partially sighted people] are often portrayed as villains: think of James Bond. Or it's the complete opposite: old and frail.”

It felt like a perfect fit for Lewis-Reece’s particular brand of character-led storytelling. Given the lack of these type of stories from the blind community, it was more important than ever that the cinematic approach, from the visual language and cinematography to sound design and music, should be filtered through Ava’s perspective. 

Just as he’d done for Eyelash, he immersed himself in research and spoke to as many people as he could from the community – as well as “reiterating to everyone I was working with - the agency, the production company and the client themselves – that none of the creative filmmaking decisions [should] be put over the character or the story.” While the film features some interesting effects, like the use of blurring lenses to mimic the deterioration of Ava’s eyesight, this was always in service of the narrative.

Above: "[Toby Allen] threw my name into the hat as he felt that my work and sensibilities combined really well with the script," says Lewis-Reece of his spot for the RNIB. 

Casting was also hugely significant in nailing that authenticity: it was vital that Eva was played by someone from the sight loss community themselves. “There's so many spinning plates with a project - you're trying to figure out the locations; tweaking the script; the story might be changing; what kind of music will you choose? what is it going to sound like? 

But once you have the casting sorted, suddenly all those questions become answerable. Once I’ve got that person - or people - that I’m looking for, I’ve got the film,” says Lewis-Reece. That bingo! moment came when he auditioned actor Eli London, who had been visually impaired since childhood. 

“Even the stories that gave opportunities to trans actors were mainly about the 'trauma' of being trans. Is that the only story those people have to tell?"

London also identifies as non-binary – which brings us onto the question of inclusive casting. Having cast trans and non-binary talent in lead roles in three of his films, does Lewis-Reece consider himself a progressive filmmaker? “I never set out with a mission to work with underrepresented groups – it’s been quite organic,” he says firmly. 

He chose trans actor Elijah W Harris, whom he has known since university, for BLEACH, and later Eyelash, because he “wanted to work with a really great actor”, rather than to make “some sort of statement”. Nevertheless, from the start, a big topic of conversation between the pair was the limited types of roles available for trans actors. 

“Even the stories that gave opportunities to trans actors were mainly about the 'trauma' of being trans. Is that the only story those people have to tell? Obviously not. And, related to that, as a trans actor, are those the only roles you’re allowed to play?” he asks. True to that, BLEACH may be a film about a trans man, but gender identity is incidental to the main narrative of fractured family dynamics, trust and betrayal.

Above: A trailer for Lewis-Reece's most recent short film, the Robert Webb-starring Mother of Mine. 

Casting may be 90% of the job, but the next step is coaxing genuinely truthful performances out of talent, be they a professional actor or a real person, such as boxer Harlem Eubank, whose gruelling training regime is sweatily, heart-poundingly captured in a spot for Sky Sports. 

“Any authenticity that's come off the screen is really down to the actors or the people I’m working with,” Lewis-Reece says modestly, adding that he does put a lot of work in to build trust. “A film set is a really artificial environment with cameras, people, a thousand things going on, so you have to work out what do they need most to give them the confidence or the breathing space to be able to give you what you're looking for on camera. A lot of that is instinctive. I have to shape-shift to serve [the talent].” 

Sparse of dialogue and heavy with unsaid thoughts, [Mother of Mine] is propelled by the gaps in the action.

The most recent example of Lewis-Reece’s knack for character work is his short film, Mother of Mine, which premiered at the London Film Festival last year and is currently doing the festival circuit. A slow, meditative portrait of grief, it stars Robert Webb of Peep Show fame, acting brilliantly against type as David, a bereaved husband and father struggling to navigate a new reality following the death of his wife. Sparse of dialogue and heavy with unsaid thoughts, the narrative is propelled by the gaps in the action. There are long silences and small, everyday details which take on a strange significance. 

Above: Lewis-Reece's spot foe the Lucy Faithful Foundation. 

The film feels almost unbearably intimate, because it was born out of personal tragedy: in 2021, Lewis-Reece’s mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly, and he returned to the family home in Brighton. As a “weird, cathartic way of coping with it all”, he started making diary-style notes and observations from this strange, liminal period – trying to capture the “page turn” of the onset of grief. 

“Things jump out at you; you start noticing all the idiosyncrasies of life, focusing on things like a door shutting without knowing why.”

“Things jump out at you; you start noticing all the idiosyncrasies of life, focusing on things like a door shutting without knowing why,” he remembers. “I went from analysing myself, and what I was going through, to analysing my dad, and how he was experiencing the same thing.”

Bullet points turned into pages, and then a screenplay – at which point he removed himself from the narrative, focusing instead on his dad’s perspective, through the character of David. “I didn’t want it to be an autobiographical film: I was interested in capturing a feeling.”