How is a Mall Goth born? Do they find a business card in their laundry one day? Stumble upon a group of black-clad youths with dyed hair in a parking lot and feel life irreparably change? Maybe they’re hatched, fully-formed, from an egg? Or simply just wake up one day with dark lipstick and a studded belt, adorned with silver chains and necklaces with crosses? Is there a coming of age ceremony or ritual? Perhaps listening to one too many Slipknot or My Chemical Romance songs in a row is what pushes someone over the edge. It’s hard to be sure unless you’ve been there yourself, and even then, you might not be totally clear on what exactly happened. Of course, it’s easier to trace now, in an era where anyone can connect to the other side of the world and its trends in the time it takes to unlock their phone. But how did people decide to change their entire identity in the Before Times™ aka the 2000s? And perhaps more perplexingly: why? With their short film The Birth of A Mall Goth (2025), it’s a mystery that, like the main character May, writer/director Samantha ‘Sam-E’ Locock endeavors to uncover.
Set some time after Y2K but before the release of the iPhone, The Birth of a Mall Goth follows autistic teenager May (Emily Carey, House of the Dragon) as she tries to make sense of her older sister Gemma’s (Lola Blue, A Kind of Spark) seemingly-overnight transformation into a ‘Mall Goth’. Produced by Poppi Knight with support from Victoria Emslie’s Primetime, a globally vetted platform intended to help find and hire women and non-binary people working above and below the line in the entertainment industry, the film is an investigation and exploration driven by the autistic need to make sense of the world around you. As I learned through conversations with Locock, Knight, and Emslie, it’s a need that all three creatives understand well, as do we at Read The Room.
One of the most impressive aspects of Locock’s short is that while it’s a film that is very demonstrative of a quintessential neurodivergent experience - more specifically an autistic one - it’s not a film about neurodivergence. Mall Goth opens with May speaking straight to camera, introducing us to our subject David Attenborough-style as Gemma eats her cereal, unaware of her sister’s examination of her behavior: ‘When did the mall goth phenomena start? How do you become one?’ The film employs its investigative journalism device through to the end, and that tonal choice was an apt tool to demonstrate the specifically autistic way of trying to understand the world. But it also serves to give Mall Goth an intriguing silliness and a sense of heightened reality, this levity meaning that even those who don’t identify as neurodivergent will relate to the film and its portrayal of the very human experience of trying to understand and connect with the people around you. That, and the longing for the time when the world wasn’t at our fingertips, no matter how much we thought we wanted it. (Bring back the analog!)
These themes that The Birth of a Mall Goth is in conversation with are universal, as highlighted by its selection for over eight film festivals and counting across the globe. It had its world premiere in 2025 at the Newport Beach Film Festival in California and expanded its audience to Italy with Rome’s As Film Festival, ‘the first film festival created by people on the Autism Spectrum’, in the same month. Earlier this year, it went back to the US’s West Coast as an official selection for the HollyShorts Comedy Film Festival and Cinequest Film Festival, both in California. It has also been nominated for several awards across festivals in the UK, including for Best Narrative Fiction at the Northampton Film Festival, Best UK Narrative Short Film at the BIFA-qualifying Ramsgate Film & TV Festival, and for the Women in Film Award at the BIFA and BAFTA-qualifying Oska Bright Film Festival, which boasts itself as the world’s leading festival for films made by or featuring people with learning disabilities or autism. But 2026 is still young, so of course the film has more festival appearances in its future. This August, it will screen at the BIFA-qualifying Sunrise Film Festival in Suffolk, UK and in just a few days will feature in the Kingston International Film Festival’s 2026 program.
Earlier this year, I connected with Locock, Knight, and Emslie - the former two via zoom, the latter via email - to chat about their lovely short film. We discussed its origins, production, and especially its setting of the early 2000s. Because as incredible as it is to live in a time where tapping a phone screen connects you to any place on the planet, or even multiple places, as was the case for Locock in London, Knight in Barcelona, and me in New York City - we couldn’t help but wax sentimental about the days before social media, without the tiny computers that now follow us from our pockets. So please enjoy our discussions about nostalgia, emo phases, neurodivergence on set, and all things The Birth of a Mall Goth. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a fake nose piercing and play around with my MySpace Top 8. brb ttyl xoxo
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Helena Emmanuel: When did you first have the idea for The Birth of a Mall Goth?
Samantha ‘Sam-E’ Locock: I have always kind of had this interest in subcultures. I don't know if you've seen the film St. Trinians, but when that came out and it had the emos, I saw them and I was like, ‘This is really cool.’ And then I just wore black for, like, two weeks. But I was nine or 10, so then I think I was just then onto the next phase, as you do.
Then [more recently] I was at a bus stop near a shopping centre and I saw a group of teenagers, and they looked exactly the same as 10 years before, five years before. It is that specific group of people that hang around malls and shopping centres. They are just always the same age; they're dressed the same. And I just kind of got obsessed with this idea of: At what point do you just suddenly become like that? Like, how does that work? Do you, I don't know, plan for a few days, go shopping, and then you come down one day and you're in your new outfit? Do you kind of soft launch it, or do you just go straight into it? So I was kind of a bit like, ‘This is so funny. How does this happen?’ I got home and I was like, ‘Oh, I think there's something in this and the ridiculousness of it.’ So I wrote down these very silly ideas as to what could suddenly spark this thing, and then it developed more into an exploration into sisterhood and identity and safety in expressing yourself.
I wanted to set it in the 2000s as well. I feel like that's the next decade everyone's gonna start making stuff for. 80’s revival is kind of on its way out, and I feel like it's gonna be 2000s now. Also, I just love how different it is. I don't know when the first iPhone came out [editor’s note: the first iPhone dropped on June 27, 2007], but that time before iPhones when the internet was contained - people had phones, but they were contained. So the world just feels so different now. The 2000s are such an interesting time to explore.
Poppi Knight: It’s the last period before everything really changed to what it is now. The era where you can remember time without phones and without the internet, but you can remember it creeping into your lives as well, but in a very contained way. I remember when I was a kid and being like, ‘Mum, can I go on the internet?’ And she'd be like, ‘No, I need to use the phone,’ you know? You didn't have free reign like now.
Sam-E: It was a corner of the room. The internet was where the computer was.
Poppi: Yeah!
[Editor’s note: Exactly! You couldn’t play Putt-Putt with your friend on their family PC in their parents’ bedroom until their dad finished his work call! And I think that’s beautiful…]
Sam-E: I think there's something fun about that. And it’s amazing how connected everyone is [now]. Like, we're literally speaking from England to New York to Spain. It's incredible. But there's just something about how, especially back then, when you would get into these ideas and stuff, it adds to [that question of]: Where does that come from? Where does suddenly falling into this come from? Like, obviously now with TikTok, you see someone doing their eyebrows a different way or makeup a different way, and it's like, ‘Oh, I could just replicate that.’ Whereas I feel like trends kind of grew and spread more organically back then.
HE: Yeah, much more like how you portray in the film: you walk by someone one day, and you're like, ‘Oh my gosh…’
Sam-E: Yeah.
HE: It's wild that the 2000s is now the period piece that everyone's doing. But I guess it has been 20 years….
Victoria, how did Primetime become aware of the project? When did you join as EP?
Victoria Emslie: We have an open door policy for Founder Members to reach out to us with projects they are interested in collaborating with us on. Sam-E and I had worked together on Emma Moffat’s Scope, which she produced, and we quickly bonded over stories which reframe and centre the human experience through a neurodivergent lens. As soon as she mentioned the premise, themes, characters and who was involved, it was a no-brainer to come onboard and [the film] completely aligns with Primetime’s mission statement and advocacy goals.
Poppi, what about you? When and where in the process did you become attached to the project?
Poppi: I only really became attached to it around summer 2024, maybe just under a year before we actually ended up shooting. I remember reading the shorter script, which I think was about 3 pages or so, and I felt attached to it from when I read it, really. Sam-E and I had worked together before as co-producers on another short, and I just - especially when it was more fleshed out, the script - found it very nostalgic; it's fun to think back to that period. And also I did have my own little emo phase, and it was just like Sam-E describes in the script: it just happens overnight. Like, suddenly it was really cool to just wear black, maybe with some pink, and listen to Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, and paint your nails black. I remember begging my mum like, ‘Please let me dye my hair black,’ and she was like, ‘Hell no, you're not doing that,’ which I'm actually very grateful for because then everyone had an awful time trying to strip it out a few weeks later.
[Editor’s note: I nodded in response to this statement as if I had been in those same trenches that Poppi was talking about, but my so-dark-brown-it’s-almost-black hair and I have never felt the need for black hair dye let alone been within an arm’s length of a brush with bleach on it, and frankly I shudder at the thought. The closest I got to a goth phase was painting my nails black for a week and walking past a Hot Topic on the way to the Cheesecake Factory. On the other hand, when I asked Victoria (and fellow brunette) if she had ever gone through a goth phase, she said, ‘I am still in my goth phase. Malls on the other hand I could never get into! Not because of how I was dressed, just energetically not a flame I was ever drawn to.’]
Sam-E: [The film] did take a while to get off the ground, because initially, before Poppi, I had two other producers. I wrote it in October 2022 and we shot it in March 2025, so I wrote the original script a long time before we shot it. I did a crowd fund campaign with the original producer, and then she had to step away because she wanted to focus on her own projects. Then I got another producer, but then she stepped away. Then luckily I found Poppi. Poppi came on and wanted to do it, and then the best thing was Poppi was like, ‘Let's just set a date.’ And I was like, ‘Thank you.’ And that was literally what we needed because it’d been so long.
But because it had been such a long process, I knew what I wanted. I could see it in my head. I knew how it was gonna cut together. I could see parts of the costume. So I think Poppi just being like, ‘Right, we are shooting it in March. We are finding a location this week. We're doing this, we're doing that’ - it was like, yes. I just needed that. The other weird thing is, because obviously each scene is so, like, bitty, we shot over two days, and we didn't go over at all. No overtime.
HE: Oh, wow! That’s amazing.
Sam-E: Yeah, it was really good. The First AD [Jemima Stephenson], she's really good, and I've got a really good level of trust with her. She would tell me if we were taking the piss or anything with stuff.
HE: How long did the script end up being? How much did it change from the beginning to the final shooting draft?
Sam-E: [The final draft] was nine pages, and it was originally around three. And basically the original idea was that we start with May, she does this little intro, and then we literally go bang-bang-bang-bang through the ideas as she's narrating it with, like, no time to breathe, almost like a music video. Just choppy, choppy, choppy, da-da-da-da-da. I actually submitted it to the BFI to get some funding, and they said they didn't feel like it was developed enough and said to maybe look more at the sisters. So then I ended up extending it quite a bit, and I think it's so much better for it. That idea of sisterhood and that thing of the younger sister being able to then express herself in a different way because her older sister's already done it - there's something quite sweet about that. And just seeing on screen these sisters who you don't really see talk that much, and they kind of go at each other, but there's still love there. I just liked that warm relationship.
But at the end of the second day, I was like, ‘I don't know how long this film is gonna be!’ And everyone was like, ‘Why are you so stressed? We've just shot the film. Does it need to be a certain length?’ I was like, ‘No, but…it feels like it's gonna be, like, three seconds long!’
Poppi: You came back and edited it, like, immediately.
Sam-E: I was gonna find an editor. I was like, ‘I'm gonna find an editor, I'm gonna,’ - you know, because it's all been in my head for so long, I was like, ‘I'm gonna remove myself a little bit from the process’. I think it was two or three days [after wrap] and then my hard drive was just calling to me, and I was like, ‘I just…I just need to check’. And then I ended up editing it. And it did fit together and it was fine.
But the nine-page script actually has a scene that we cut out during the shoot, because we would have gone into overtime. It was a scene where they're in a piercing shop, and the piercer slips and accidentally gives Gemma an eyebrow piercing. And I think because I also work as a producer, I just know that, you know, when people are giving up their weekend and they're not being paid a lot to do a short film - we paid everyone, but they're not being paid a lot - I didn’t know if I could really ask people on a Sunday evening to stay for another hour and a half or two hours. It just didn't really feel right. It would have been fun, but it sadly just didn't work out.
HE: That’s a whole new location, yeah.
Sam-E: We were gonna redress one of the rooms in the house as a piercing shop. I was just like, ‘We just can't do this right now, guys.’ But it still works without it, luckily.
Poppi: It would have been a fun extra scene to add, but I think everything the film has already completely makes sense, so it just would have been an additional thing. I don't think we lose anything from not having it.
HE: Definitely. The film didn't feel to me like it was missing that.
You mentioned that when you first wrote it, Sam-E, that the beats felt more like a music video. I know that you have directed music videos before, (Hot Wife’s ‘No You, No Problem’, Margarita Helene’s ‘Insecure’) and Poppi, you've produced cross the entertainment space - podcasts, docs, and shorts. I’m curious, do your approaches to the project you're working on differ depending on what kind of project it is?
Poppi: How does it differ? I mean, with documentary, for example, it is something that is much more difficult to control. Whereas with a short, for example, that is something you can plan. Scripted stuff, you can plan down to a T, really, and if you've planned it well, you know what's gonna happen. With documentary, you have to let go of that, and you can plan stuff down to the T as much as you like, but then it's real, so anything can happen. I'm working on a documentary with teenage girls at the moment, and you'll think you've planned everything perfectly for the shoot on the weekend, and then suddenly one of them's got a tummy bug, or one forgot that they had a sleepover, and da-da-da. So from that respect, it is completely different.
The podcast that I did is kind of something in-between. It’s something that is produced to an extent, but the hosts that I work with, they're both writers and comedians and actors and they did a lot of freestyling with the podcast as well. So it is quite different, I think, the approaches, with documentary being the furthest away from the other mediums I've done.
Sam-E: I think the reason why I was originally thinking of it as pacey like a music video was that what I'd made before, they were kind of more drama-y, but I’ve always loved comedy. I've watched so many comedy TV shows. It's what I want to get into, and I think some of the best comedies are quite pacey, and as almost a new genre for me to be exploring, it felt like it was safer to do something short and pacey with just key moments [of drama], and then also it would be a kind of calling card for music videos and commercials. I think we still have elements of that in the final film, but I much prefer the longer version. I much prefer the time that we took to develop those characters and also to develop them with Emily (‘May’) and Lola (‘Gemma’). It just felt much, much bigger and more grounded, but it still has those moments in it that almost…. I mean, they're not fully music video-y, but, you know, when we're near the egg and then we cut back to inside and then we're back outside. It's a little bit of those. But then we also do have moments to breathe.
HE: At the festivals that you've been able to go to in person, and even outside of that, what was it like to watch the film with an audience and see them react to it?
Sam-E: It was so strange. The first time was at Newport Beach, and not only was that my first time seeing it on a big screen with no one who had worked on it, it was also an American audience, which is just different to a British one. I don't think it's, like, a specifically British film - it is in Britain, and they are British, but it was like, ‘Are Californians and Americans gonna understand the humour? Is a specific moment still gonna land?’ I was so sweaty waiting for my film to play in that program and I think it was the second to last one. So I was just like–
Poppi: Not concentrating on anything.
Sam-E: Yeah! And then I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ But it was really nice, and then a couple people came up to me afterwards who were like, ‘Oh, I remember my goth phase,’ and I was like, ‘Yes!’ I think because it is a thing that so many people went through in different ways or at different times of their life, so many people take bits from it. It’s just so nice hearing people relate to it.
We did a cast and crew and industry screening last month, and I was just so stressed that whole day. Even after it. Even after we spoke to everyone and everyone was really friendly and complimentary, I was still just, like, getting in my head a bit and just being a bit paranoid of, like: they're just saying this because they know you. But I did sit in one of the screenings, and people were laughing, so I'm like, ‘Okay, I don't think they were laughing–’
Poppi: At you?
Sam-E: Yeah! They're not looking at me and then laughing just to make sure I hear it. But there is always that feeling when you make something or you write something or you take a photo or anything where as soon as you share something, you have no control over it anymore. It's out in the world for other people to interpret, and that is very scary. It is very scary.
Poppi: I've seen it on a big screen with other people at this private screening that we did in London. And I'm so used to just watching it alone on my laptop, then being in a room with other people, and everyone's laughing at all the right moments that I've become a little more desensitized to because I've seen it so many times. But everyone laughed, and I was like, ‘Oh my god! Wow! Everyone's finding it funny! This is so good.’ It was really cool. A really different experience, obviously, to being sat alone watching it.
I guess as well because it's not a drama. If it's a drama, then there's more pressure for you to know if you made people feel a certain way. Whereas with a comedy, it's a bit easier because they're either laughing or not.
HE: Right, you know if you hit the beats.
Sam-E: Yeah.
HE: What about the film do you think is resonating with so many people?
Victoria: Everyone remembers that moment when they are on the cusp of transformation as a teenager - looking around to find the group, music, ideas which give them a sense of belonging. We seek to make sense of our identity through trying out new experiences and seeing what resonates. This film shines an acute light onto the very human question of, “who am I?”, “where do I belong and how?” Seen through a teenage lens, we have compassion for the characters, a generosity which we do not always extend to adults, especially ourselves. So Mall Goth invites us to lighten up, to not take life to seriously, to embrace change, and know that we’re all just passing through, so enjoy the ride.
Read The Room Mag: I'd like to shift a little bit more to talking about accessibility and neurodivergence. My co-editor of the magazine and I are both disabled and neurodivergent, so we really appreciate when media reflects those experiences, especially when people in those communities are the ones creating said media. In last year’s Variety article about the film, it was mentioned that ‘neurodiverse talent control[led] the creative process, both on and on screen and off.’ Was that something you went into making the film knowing that you wanted to do intentionally from the outset, or did it just happen that way?
Victoria: By the time I had been approached, championing neurodivergent talent onscreen and off was at the heart of the project, and I’m sure one of the main reasons why Sam-E felt the story, characters, team and way of working would resonate with me and the changes I want to see happen within the Industry. Everyone deserves to feel respected and safe at their workplace, and on set is no different; so having these case studies of best practice and accessibility embedded into the core of the project gives others a roadmap to follow, as well as showing financiers that there is a hunger and audience for neurodivergent projects, whether you identify with that lived experience or not.
Sam-E: When I wrote the script I had no idea [about my diagnosis]. Like, ‘Why am I suddenly so obsessed with this idea? Why have I now got home and spent literally five hours at my laptop writing this all down in complete hyperfocus? No idea why that would happen!’ And then after a year and a half, I kept getting these suggested videos on TikTok that were like, ‘You are autistic, you have ADHD.’ And I was like, ‘I don't know why this keeps promoting this to me.’ Then after a while, I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Maybe I am.’ I ended up doing a lot of reading about it all and then getting referred for a diagnosis and then I got my diagnosis. And it was around the time I got my diagnosis that we also started developing a script to make it a bit longer, and I was like, ‘Oh, the reason why May is so obsessed with this idea is because she's neurodivergent.’ That's why she can't just take things as, ‘Oh, someone just wants to be a goth.’ It's like, there must be a reason.
HE: 'And I have to figure it out!’
Sam-E: Yeah, and ‘I must now make this make sense to myself.’ So there was partly that, and then also a lot of neurodivergent people are very creative. We are problem solvers; we don't understand the world in the same way, so we make our own understanding. So that also came in with regards to these ridiculous reasons as to why Gemma might be a goth: how far can May's imagination stretch? Then Poppi came on, and I actually didn't realize that Poppi was also neurodivergent when we first started working together, so that was kind of by accident. The production designer I like to work with also has ADHD, and a sound recordist does as well. I do think neurodivergent people do just subconsciously tend to be drawn to each other.
Poppi Knight: Yeah, absolutely.
Sam-E: I don't know how or why it happened. I mean, there's also obviously a lot of neurodivergent people in the film industry. I don't know what happens, but it does. But it did feel like that was important once we realized this is a neurodivergent story. It's not explicitly about neurodiversity. It has relatable elements to everyone, but if you are autistic or you have ADHD, you can see parts of yourself in May. I think that was nice. I really liked this idea of representation that is meaningful for people from those underrepresented groups, but the film's not just about that.
And then as soon as we got to the casting, we agreed it would be really nice to cast at least one neurodivergent actor or actress….
Poppi: But still, we didn’t go looking for it. We weren't like, ‘Okay, let's look for as many neurodivergent crew…’ We weren't doing it in a ticking box [way], as if this is a neurodivergent story, so we should have neurodivergent cast or crew. With the cast we thought it could be nice, but we didn’t want to necessarily limit ourselves. But then we found the two perfect cast.
Sam-E: Lola came through an audition, and I had heard of her before because of A Kind of Spark (BYUtv), and obviously she was Emmy-nominated for that. She just had something about her that I was like, ‘She seems really fun and interesting’. With Emily Carey, we were like, ‘We should just try and do a direct offer and see what Emily says’. So I wrote them a letter that was kind of like, ‘You're autistic, I'm autistic, this character is autistic…’ And also Emily's queer and they post a lot about that and they're very open about it, and I think there is this part of alternative culture, like, dressing and stuff, where when you are young and queer, [dressing] is a way of expressing it. So I put that in the letter as well. Many people I know now who are still kind of ‘alternatives’, most of them are queer or neurodivergent. I'm not saying everyone is, but there's definitely crossovers there.
Emily read the script and they were really complimentary about it. We ended up doing a rehearsal and costume fitting day that was me, Marouane [Joubba] the costume designer, Emily, and Lola, and that was the first time Emily and Lola met. There's not a lot of dialogue in the film, but having those hours where we can just sit and just chat about life and talk about neurodiversity - because that’s always what happens when you're with a bunch of other autistic people - I think helped them build this little bond with each other and with me. That meant that when we came onto set, we already knew we had each other's backs. Going forward as well with future projects, I 100% think that having a few hours in person to chat with your cast, even if it's not about the film, is just so good for starting those relationships.
On set, we tried to make it accessible if we could. Poppi had asked Emily and Lola's agents if they had accessibility requirements, and then we would try and follow those access requirements, give them lots of breaks if they needed it, try and reduce the amount of people around if we were going through instructions or if they needed to go and just sit in the green room. Just try and do stuff like that.
It was also the first time that I had my little fidgety little tangly thing. I could just have that in my hand and not feel embarrassed, because this is my film and I'm around people who get it. That was such a new experience for me. I've never had that on set. It’s a weird thing with neurodivergence, where it can take a while - I was late diagnosed, so especially so - to accept it. There's different levels to that, and, you know, it'll probably take the rest of your life to properly work through it all. But that felt like such a big step for me in being like, ‘Hey, I can just, like, let my guard down a bit. I don't have to mask as hard as I would normally on set. I can just kind of…be me.’ And I know as well that Em and Lola can see that and they hopefully would make them feel comfortable to do that if they needed to as well. There was just something really, really nice about that.
HE: That makes me really happy to hear, and I'm happy for you that you had that experience.
Sam-E: It was also important to me that the shoot days weren't super, super long. I mean, they're still long because shoots are just long. But like I said, we didn't do any overtime, and the days were 10 plus 1 days rather than 11 plus 1, which some short films go for. But again, I just feel like 12 hours on set is too much. I've got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, so I just know that I would not cope with that and I also would not want to put anyone through that either. And having time to have a break, or just, you know, go outside and get some air and just try and recharge a bit was really important to me.
HE: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I love hearing that. When you hear about shorter days or of people scheduling in breaks, it's so affirming. Like,‘Yes! It really is possible!’ You can do it. It doesn't have to be this marathon, this crazy, crazy thing that just runs everyone into the ground.
Sam-E: I agree. It is really hard, especially working in production most of the time. You are normally on set for 15 hours sometimes. You will do overtime, and that is not healthy. To do that every day is not healthy. There's no work-life balance, there's no time to rest or eat properly. Even just little things just to keep yourself going become really hard. I would love for the industry to change a bit, but I don't see how currently it would.
Poppi: It's crazy how normalised it is, too, to not have a moment to sit down or go for a pee.
Sam-E: Or go to the toilet, yeah, literally. That's the thing that always gets me.
HE: When I was a production assistant here [in NYC], there was a rule that PAs can't sit down.
Sam-E: I was just thinking of that!
HE: And not only is it ableist, but it's just a bit ridiculous.
Poppi: Yeah, yeah. And also, if you do sit down and someone offers you to sit down, you don't want anyone to see that you've sat down because it's like a weakness, almost.
HE: Right.
Sam-E: Or you have to appear busy. I’ve had it before where I'm in a production office and I'm literally waiting for a reply from an email or something, and you're just clicking around on your screen. Because if you look like you're not doing anything, then people will be like, ‘Why are you not doing anything?’ And then I find that even more draining. Being bored and pretending to be doing stuff is so much more mentally exhausting than just actually working. Which is saying a lot, because this is a hard industry.
HE: I always found it really interesting that so many people in the film industry seem to be neurodivergent, yet it can be such a hostile and untenable place for neurodivergent people. How do these things coexist?
Sam-E: I honestly think that it's because a lot of big producers are neurodivergent and they don't know. I’m not going around diagnosing everyone, but I think it is interesting, knowing that a lot of neurodivergent people do flock to creative industries, particularly film and TV. Also, there's generations of people that are undiagnosed, so… yeah. Yeah.
Poppi: I think in crew as well in general there's so many neurodivergent people because we can't necessarily conform to a 9-to-5 where we sit down at the computer all day. For me, in my work, I tried that before. I did an office job and I went insane, because I was like, ‘What am I doing? I’m not making anything here. I'm just clicking around all day.’ And for me, with making films or having a kind of product at the end, I can feel where my energy is going, and there's a purpose to what I'm doing. I think a lot of people feel that with doing something kind of physical on set, being up on your feet, chatting to people, and figuring things out in sometimes completely chaotic ways when you're presented with a problem and are like, ‘Okay, we need to fix this!’ and you'll take crazy ideas from anyone and then make it work, you know? And typical workplaces don’t really allow for that.
HE: How, if at all, have your diagnoses affected how you approach your work? Sam-E, did getting diagnosed halfway through making this project change your relationship to it or how you viewed what you were making?
Sam-E: Completely. I mean, I only got diagnosed with ADHD just before Christmas, so I didn't know that was a part of it [the film]. I had an idea, but I didn't know that was a part of it. But it definitely did, because I wrote this script that I really liked and I really wanted to make it. All kinds of writer-directors are always trying to push for their work to be made, but I think once I got diagnosed, it definitely made me see it in a different way, and then it felt even more important to get it made in that sense.
I think it did change it, but it didn't change the script. That was the weird thing. It was almost like, ‘Okay, well, here's this version of the script, and oh, by the way, Poppi, May is actually autistic.’ Okay, cool. Like, no words change. You just go on then, with that intention in your head: okay, so that's why May's doing that. Okay, so that's why that's happening. It’s not just a little quirk.
Poppi: I remember you texting me, ‘I think May is autistic.’ And I was like, ‘Huh, yeah. That all makes a lot of sense now.’
Sam-E: So it did change my relationship with it a bit, but I think it just made me feel more attached to it maybe, or just made me understand how I got that from my head to the screen.
It’s weird. I've had someone ask me before if it’s a personal film, and I don't know if it’s super personal. I am not a younger sister; I'm an older sister. My youngest sibling and I, we have a completely separate relationship. Growing up, we were not close at all. We're a lot closer now as adults, but, [the film] is not reflective of our relationship growing up at all, and neither of us went through a proper intense goth period. But that whole thing of wanting to find out who you are and express yourself in a way that feels comfortable is a thing that I've always gone through. Which then, yeah, the autism diagnosis did help with being like, ‘Okay, that's why I felt like that my whole life.’ I think there's definitely personal elements to it and I do feel like I relate strongly to May and Gemma for separate reasons, but it's not super, super personal. It's not based on my life or anything.
Victoria: I received my diagnoses whilst living alone in the middle of the pandemic, which was a singularly disorientating and isolated time. In the moment, I hadn’t grasped that I was going through burnout and so tried to channel my confusion and frustration into something practical. Addiction to work has always been my one big vice. So over the course of around 18 straight hours I put together a 34 page Industry-standard guide on how to work with AuDHD actors onscreen, focusing on the Casting process, pre-production, filming, post production and PR & publicity. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with this hyperfixation creation, so reached out to a friend at BAFTA to see if they might like to get behind it. I was swiftly invited to join BAFTA’s Disability Advisory Group, and whilst, at the time, I didn’t have the self-confidence to talk openly about my diagnoses and back myself, like many other adventures I go on, it was a lot easier to turn up and champion other people and to make change happen on a systemic level. Now, I like to approach change from both the systemic and the individual level, as I’ve found much healing in sharing my own story honestly, as it then creates an environment for others to offer up their own truth. I won’t mention the number of friends who have sought diagnoses after in depth conversations; but I’ll say this, my ND radar is impeccable and has never been wrong so far. Bringing this back to work, the empathy garnered from going through this process both privately and now publicly, has meant that I feel resourced to turn up for people and their lived experiences to give grace and support, whether a diagnosis has been disclosed or not.
HE: I loved the choice that you made to have May talk straight to camera. It felt like she was an investigative journalist doing a piece on a facet of another species’ behavior, and structuring the film like that was powerful and resonated with me a lot. If you’re someone who’s neurodivergent, especially autistic, and watching it, you can clock the layered significance of that, but if you aren’t, you might attribute a choice like breaking the fourth wall to a general tone of silliness and heightened reality. And it still hits, but doesn’t carry the same weight. It works on different levels. I also loved that at the end, Gemma was like, ‘Oh no, that’s over. I'm in a vintage phase now.’
Sam-E: ‘That's it, I've had enough now.’ I did say to Lola when we had the rehearsal, ‘I've not specifically diagnosed my own character with anything, but I do feel like Gemma definitely has some ADHD tendencies,’ and Lola does have ADHD as well, and was like, ‘Yes.’
HE: Gemma’s really into this thing, and then-
Sam-E: Really, like, hyperfixated, and then, yeah, ‘That's it!’ It's on to the next thing, which I relate very strongly to.
HE: Do you like producing over directing and writing, or are they just different for you?
Sam-E: So different. I fell into producing by accident. Purely just because I was like, ‘I finished film school and I’ve just specialized in directing and I'm gonna come out and start making loads of films!’ But one: where's the money? Two: where's the kit? I ended up just teaching myself very basically how to produce. I had a mentor called Andy Newman who helped me, and we produced a film together. Then the next film that I produced, he was my production manager and just gave me so much advice. I've just kind of learned as I've gone on, and now I work freelance in short-form producing and production managing as well.
But it feels so different [from directing]. I like the two together, because producing tickles my brain with the logistical stuff and the problem solving and all that stuff, whereas with the directing and writing, I can still make things and do things creatively. I do think there's creative aspects to producing and they can work well together, but I do prefer to, if I'm doing a project, try and keep them separate. But it is also hard when I am writing and directing now to not be thinking as a producer. It's so hard. I'll be writing and I'm like, ‘Oh, that's gonna be really hard to do,’ and I need to keep telling myself that's not on you, that's on the producer.
HE: You’re writing like, ‘Oh, this is actually a lot of people to cast….’
Sam-E: ‘Maybe too many.’
Poppi: ‘Hold on, that's not my problem today.’
Sam-E: Yeah, exactly, and there's something quite nice about that. I do really enjoy both and I think there's definitely a lot of crossover, but I also think with directing there's a lot of imposter syndrome, because - especially when you're making short films and stuff, or even the music videos I've made - you're not doing it all the time, so there's so much time in between each project for self-doubt to creep in. And you can plan as much as you want, but everything comes down to that day of shooting, or those two days of shooting.
I love it, but I'm still trying to, like, work out how it all works. I don't know. It's a funny one. I think it's hard to know until you're in it if that is the right role for you and if that's what you really want to be doing. But maybe that’s just a me thing, being on set, where I'm just getting in my head.
HE: What do you hope people take away after seeing Birth or Mall Goth? How do you hope they feel?
Victoria: Nostalgia and a shared smile for their playful inner child who will have gone through a similar journey of self-discovery.
Sam-E: There are a few different things I'd hope you'll take. I mean, for neurodivergent people, I guess it's just having that little bit of representation that they can see on screen, because I think that's so important. Growing up, there really wasn't a lot on screen. And I know there's a lot of talk of, ‘Oh, well, this character's clearly autistic-coded, or this character's clearly this-coded,’ and it's like, okay, but they don't feel like me, whereas May feels like me. So I guess I'd hope that other people - other neurodivergent people like me - feel like they're seeing themselves a little bit on screen.
Obviously, we want people to find it funny and take away that they've had a great 8 minutes, 21 seconds. That would be great. And then, depending on who it is, remembering those cringe-worthy times where you went through these phases, and that was weird, wasn't it? I think that kind of thing - getting people to think about their identity and finding themselves and these past times and memories that we've had and phases we've been through, and connect over that.
Poppi: For me, I would say that people find it fun and ask questions. Be curious. That's a huge part of this, and I think even though it is a neurodivergent story, it's not explicitly so. It's quite a gentle nod to it. It’s within the world instead of being like, ‘This is a neurodivergent story.’ And I think it being more of a nod is quite welcoming to other neurodivergent people in the industry, or just audiences, or whoever, to feel included in something rather than it being such a broadcast, if you know what I mean.
HE: Absolutely.
Is there anything you’re working on coming up that you want people to be looking out for that you're excited about?
Sam-E: Too many! Yeah, we've got a potential idea, again, set in the early 2000s around a phone box. And it's about these two friends and neurodiversity and this queer relationship. I don't know how else to really explain it. Two friends, and they basically have found this phone box, and she has like, 10-15 seconds to say what she needs to say on a reverse phone call. It’s about getting that perfect, and why does it need to be perfect, and, you know, that kind of stress on yourself. It's quite simple, but I think it’s an interesting exploration. And then Poppi's also producing several other projects in the works. I'm also producing a couple projects in the works. It's a busy, busy time for the short film world.
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The Birth of a Mall Goth is screening Saturday, June 6 at the Kingston International Film Festival in the UK.
Words: Helena Emmanuel (she/they)
For more content on disability representation in film and inclusive filmmaking, check out these other articles from us:
Championing Untold Stories in Film
Artistry and Inclusivity in 'Before We Sleep'
A Compassionate Approach To Film
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