Molly Burdett: Behind the scream

Some pieces of work spill out of their frames and spread far and wide, and Molly Burdett’s hard-hitting Have a Word (out of Ogilvy and Spindle) was urgent if uncomfortable viewing that urged guys to step up and confront misogynistic ‘bantz’ that can all too easily turn threatening, abusive, then terrifying. 

That it was released shortly after the traumatising disappearance of Sarah Everard and as the appalling story of her abduction, rape and murder began to unfold across the news, Have a Word’s impact hit with an even greater urgency than Burdett could ever have anticipated. 

“I think advertising can change minds.”

The reverberation of that impact can still be felt today in the ongoing conversations – online and in real life – about women, men, safety, masculinity, toxicity, sexism, harassment and violence. Can those conversations change things? Let’s have a word with the director and storyteller who has helped to drive home that urge for change.

Above: Burdett's award-winning film about anti-male violence, Have a Word.

“I think advertising can change minds,” Burdett says. “If you’re putting a positive message out or showcasing a subject that hasn’t been talked about as much, or a perspective that is new, that can only be a good thing. It goes back to people feeling comfortable enough to talk about it more. For me it’s about observing and looking for the lesser seen faces, stories and settings.”

Before Have a Word, Burdett had already tackled the hard, topic of domestic violence, and her piece for Women’s Aid, Respite, was wound up tight with the tension and fear embedded in abusive relationships.

"After Have a Word, I had strangers reaching out to me saying how much it emotionally resonated."

“With these types of campaigns, you have to know how to get under the skin of your audience,” she says. “To do that you need to have a deep understanding of the characters and subject matter. With Have a Word, the timing was crazy – it was just after Sarah Everard went missing, and it blew up in a way we didn’t expect it to. We never could have planned that.

"After Have a Word, I had strangers reaching out to me saying how much it emotionally resonated. I think it made women and girls feel seen, while also sparking conversations among men about women’s safety and harmful language.” That wasn’t its only impact. As a result of Have a Word, the UK government invested £18 million to combat violence against women, and it has been included in the national curriculum and used as a training resource by the United Nations.

Above: Burdett's powerful 2020 spot for Women's Aid, which tackled the topic of domestic abuse.

Burdett knows how to bring a palpable emotional honesty to her storytelling, building up from the many levels of prep she brings to each job. “When I start a project, I always try to connect it to something I’ve felt, seen or heard,” she says, “What’s my take on it? How can I tell it in the most relatable way? I’m always searching for universal truths that will touch people. Research is a big part of that process. Who can I talk to, what can I read or watch to get a better understanding of this?”

“Its power lies in its familiarity – a quiet fear shared by millions of women."

Since winning the British Arrow’s Impact Award and Frank Budgen Award for Best Director for Have a Word, Burdett has gone on to make a winning adidas spot for the Women’s Euros, and her first short film, the 11-minute A Loud Piece of Armour, which takes a deep dive into the sound and impetus behind a woman’s screams. Funding came off the back of Have a Word. “Ogilvy part-funded it,” says Burdett. “At the D&AD awards in 2023 I was telling them about a script a writer had sent to me, that explored similar themes to Have a Word. They were interested, I pitched it, and they invested in it. It’s rare to have a short invested in by an agency – it’s a testament to the great relationship we’d built.”

That writer was Riz Moritz, part of TV series Coronation Street’s stable, and her script explores similar themes to Have a Word but, says Burdett, it goes deeper. “Its power lies in its familiarity – a quiet fear shared by millions of women. What interested me was capturing the female experience of not being able to protect yourself if you’re in danger, but also what different screams sound like. The primal, raw image of a woman’s scream intrigued me. Screaming can be a powerful weapon, but it can also be raw, cathartic, joyful – a release or a cry for help. It’s a visceral, immersive short that grabs you and spits you out again quite quickly.”

Above: The trailer for A Loud Piece of Armour.

To prep the soundtrack, Burdett went out with a field recorder. “I was interested in what a scream sounds like,” she says, “all the different types of screams, but I was also interested in the age at which we lose that pure, primal scream – why does a grown woman’s scream sound so different? A Loud Piece of Armour is a film about vulnerability, self-protection. The scream becomes part of our main character’s armour. I loved that idea.” She made field recordings out on the street, at funfairs, listening in as she passed playgrounds. “All of these varied sounds started to feed into the emotional journey that our main character was going on. Weaving a rich sound tapestry was a vital part of it.”

"The scream becomes part of our main character’s armour. I loved that idea.”

Actor Jo Hartley, who featured in the recent Netflix series Adolescence, stars as Holly, who sets out to rediscover the primal scream she had as a child. “I had to find an actor who had the vulnerability but also the ferocity,” says Burdett. “Balancing the light and shade of the script was really important – it’s an intense subject matter and we didn’t want viewers to come away from it thinking, ‘fucking hell what have I watched?’. But there had to be some humour in there. Jo was perfect for the role.”

Above: Spain’s Aitana Bonmatí and England’s Alessia Russo feature in Burdett's spot for this year's Women's Euros. 

With A Loud Piece of Armour now blazing a trail on the global festival circuit, another highlight of her year has been the adidas Best of Rivals campaign for the Women’s Euros, set to a tender Velvet Underground outtake, I’m Sticking with You, sung by Moe Tucker.

It features a star line-up of footballers, fronted by two of the game’s finest, Spain’s Aitana Bonmatí and England’s Alessia Russo, who face off against each other in the tunnel before heading onto the pitch, and into history. “We wanted to celebrate the women’s game, and how it’s different,” says Burdett. “So, finding those nuances in the story was where I put my focus. How can this film resonate more deeply? With fans, football culture, society?”

“To see girls watching the game with their dads in the pub was a really rewarding moment for me.”

As it turned out, what Burdett and her crew depicted on screen really happened on the pitch. “It was crazy, a true case of when art imitates life – we were all thinking, ‘Imagine if Spain and England end up playing each other in the final!’.”

And on the day, the on-pitch action spilled out of the screen into real life too. “To see girls watching the game with their dads in the pub was a really rewarding moment for me,” says Burdett. “We wanted to inspire the younger generation to dream bigger than before.”