Them Ones

🎬 FESTIVAL NEWS 🎬 Leaving Ikorodu In 1999 will be showing at @raindancefilmfestival and @blackstarfest ! Grateful and excited to bring our short film to London with a UK Premiere at Raindance Film Festival. We’ll be playing on 23rd and 24th June at Vue Cinema Piccadilly before heading to @blackstarfest for our U.S. Premiere this August 🎟️ If you’re at Raindance or Philadelphia this summer - come through 🇳🇬

Them Ones x Garden of Afruika: Breaking Bread 🤎 Yesterday we brought together a few of the most inspiring, nurturing and imaginative minds and souls to cook together, break bread together, and dream of the collective potential and future of Them Ones together. Guided by @gardenofafruika , we made pumpkin chana curry with plait braid, plantain, and an avocado and cucumber salad, while dreaming up infrastructure, creativity, ambition and a collective ethos for Them Ones that is rooted in ‘we’, not ‘I’. The collective is at the centre of Them Ones - we exist because I exist, and I exist because you exist. Thank you to the family who gave up their Sunday to nourish one another: Abigail, Akil, Anu, Daniel, Debo, Estie, Eyram, Junior, Kareem, Nate, Ola, Reena, Sofia, Tamara-Jade, Tia, and Xanthus. A special thank you to Victoria and Maria at @hackneyschooloffood who allowed this day to run so smoothly and kept us warm with fresh Rosemary and Mint Tea from the garden, and to @wearemirchi for the delicious spiced rum. 📸 All captured by the peopledem

Excited to be screening at the New York African Film Festival next! 7th and 8th May at the Lincoln Center✨

HURRICANE MELISSA FUNDRAISER: £800 RAISED! We’re thrilled to announce that our Hurricane Melissa New Year’s Fundraiser raised £800, that has been donated to the Caribbean Hurricane Fund to support on-the-ground rebuilding efforts in Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa. A huge thank you to organisers Anjela Lauren Smith and Tobi Kyeremateng, our host Richie Brave (BBC1 XTRA), and Babymother lead actor and DJ Wil Johnson, for helping us make the event the beautiful night of vibrant community it was. Shoutout to everyone who attended and celebrated Jamaican culture with us, and of course, a massive thank you to everyone who donated, including @maharishi who provided clothing for the raffle. For more information on the fund, and to make a donation please follow @black.curatorial

Thank you to @ourppls.art for leading the way in creative care 🫶🏿 I’ve said it so many times it’s probably become boring to hear, but I deeply care about the way we work with each other in the arts. This is a people’s business - 80% of my job is holding people’s highs and lows. Care isn’t about agreeing with each other all the time (because that would be dry), but how we show up for each other when production is hard, or one of us is having a bad day, or we don’t agree on an approach to things. Care is at the centre of conflict as well as resolution. I love getting to work with artists, crew, and stories, and I hope I keep getting to learn and do and learn and do and learn and do ❤️ #CreativesWhoCare Class of 2026

In Motion, We Remember | The National Gallery | 20.02.26 For @wearesoul ’s Friday Late at @nationalgallery , I’ve curated 3 film pieces that speak to the themes of art and movement, honouring the process as much as the performance, where artists move as one, finding rhythm, voice and connection through creativity. 💫 And Granny Would Dance (2024) dir. Maryam Mohajer Six-year-old Marmar observes how the adult women in her life navigate their relationships with their loved ones and each other. She listens in on her grandmother’s friends laughing about their partners as they play an illicit game of cards. Based on the director’s memories of her childhood in Iran, And Granny Would Dance is a tale of love, grief and resilience across generations. At its heart, it is a tribute to the solidarity of Iranian women. 💫 ęmí: freedomsong (2025) dir. Rohan Ayinde and Tayo Rapoport ęmí: freedomsong is an audio-visual piece inspired by bell hooks’ All About Love and Camille Sapara Barton’s Tending Grief. Reflecting on the Yoruba concept of ęmí {the breath that animates life} freedomsong invites audiences to connect with their voices and find the courage to speak out. Rooted in the history of revolutionary song, ęmí: freedomsong alchemises grief into a shared language of love, protest, and possibility. 💫 Paradise (2023), dir. Child. Director child. maps Crenshaw’s dreamy spirit of Black living through this kaleidoscopic visual narrative, merging archive footage, everyday characters, and music from producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin. Punctuated by a narration that feels like home, Paradise places Crenshaw’s soul before the audience and invites us to move, sing, and dream.

For the final time, we’re taking over the @nationalgallery on 20th February for a digital exhibition and film screening in collaboration with @takemorephotos , @ocurenscontent , @ctrlncreate , @them___ones and @pavilionworks . ‘In Motion, We Remember’ is a curated evening of art, movement, creativity and music films, followed by a live Q&A with selected filmmakers and curators. This isn’t just another event. It’s our final event, ever. A full-circle moment and a celebration of what we’ve built as a community. Secure your FREE ticket via the link in our bio to be in the room. Spaces are limited. #WEARESOUL #FridayLate #NationalGallery

Rotterdam Producer Lab 2026 done 🇳🇱 Shock horror - didn’t take nearly enough photos to capture the experience. An amazing week of learning and laughing with the best of the best. An ambush of tigers, for real. Thank you @iffr and @britisharts for nominating me as part of the UK delegation of producers to attend and supporting me to get here. It’s a consideration I deeply needed at this stage in my career. To be able to travel to learn and work is a privilege. To spend a week with 80+ other people from all over the world is one-in-a-lifetime. Until next time, Rotterdam ❤️🤍💙

Founder Tobi Kyeremateng has been selected for @iffr ’s Rotterdam Producers Lab, nominated by British Council 🇳🇱 The prestigious Rotterdam Producers Lab is one of the few producer-focused labs looking at international co-production methodologies. Thank you to @britisharts for the selection ❤️ If you’ll be in Rotterdam - holla!

Leaving Ikorodu In 1999 - Flickerfest International Short Film Festival 2026 We’re back in 🇦🇺 at the end of the month at @flickerfest in Sydney! We’ll be showing on Saturday 24th January as part of the Best Of International Shorts 1 Programme. If you’re around, come through! More 2026 festival news to come 🌍

Them Ones x Garden of Afruika: Plottings and (New) Recipes For me, 2025 has been a year of re-centring the ‘why’ in my work and bringing it back to a people-centred practice. The creative industries can really harden us as people. My deep emotional care for not only the stories I make, but mainly the people I choose to work with, is the core of my integrity and I’m really proud of it. I only ever want to choose to surround myself with people who care about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the ways we work; those who are excited about pondering collectively, failing safely, and exchanging notes on an integrity-based manifesto for our collective thrivance. The Them Ones (Local) Away Day last month holds a microcosmic but true reflection of the spirit I hope to embed within Them Ones: led with love, play, and the collective imagination. Building our communal knowledge systems is something I’ve always stood firm about, and I’m excited to share our learnings and questions from the day beautifully crafted by @tamarajadekaz , alongside the recipes to the food we made together led by @gardenofafruika . As @eyramdzotsi said at the beginning of the class - it is up to us to build upon, create anew, and pass down recipes to generations to come. 📸 Taken by the peopledem, with the B&W photos shared by our sis @anuhenriques