Experience stories that matter. Join us at SODA (School of Digital Arts) for a screening of six entries from Recovery Street Film Festival 2025. Films created by people with lived experience of substance use.
For over a decade, this festival has grown from grassroots street screenings to a national platform with over a million views. Each film is a raw, authentic testament to resilience, hope, and transformation—voices often unheard, now amplified through the art of recovery through film.
Panel Discussion – Stay for an inspiring conversation with:
- Dr Rachel Genn – Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Fiction and Script), Manchester Metropolitan University (panel chair)
- Maddie Kitchen – Creative Director, Recovery Street Film Festival
- David McCollom – Award winning filmmaker of The Light Side
- Dominic Pillai – Curator of Social Engagement, Portraits of Recovery
Scroll down to read panelists biographies.
Films:
The Light Side (Dir: David McCollom & Lucy Rocca) Set in Sheffield and filmed in a striking mix of black & white and colour, this collaborative film is a documentary that follows Lucy Rocca on her recovery journey. The film captures how her personal transformation fuelled the creation of the online community Soberistas and the authorship of five books.
Reach (Dir: Kayleigh Gibbons) is a short, animated film that visualizes a profound human moment: the first, most difficult step on the path to recovery. Inspired by the immense courage it takes to ask for help, the film uses the fluid and expressive medium of animation to depict the vulnerability, hope, and connection inherent in the act of reaching out.
The Woman’s Recovery Mural (Dir: Maddie Kitchen) In Caledonia Park, a group of women in recovery came together to create a mural of hope, healing and connection. This documentary film follows this group of women on their journey through active addiction to artists.
It’s Magical (Dir: Michael Close & James Mosley) This documentary interview with James Clark chronicles a profound journey: how the primal safety he once found in fashion, drawing aand creativity was seized by addiction, replaced by hate, despair, and ruin. It then follows his path back to the light as he embraces his true self and rediscovers the magic within.
Sons of Jericho (Dir: Laura Roberts & Alex Black) is a poignant documentary film set in Derby. It charts the journeys of five men, each navigating his own path to recovery at the Jericho House centre. As they work to rebuild their lives, an unexpected thread weaves them together: music. Forming the band “Sons of Jericho,” they transform their shared struggles into strength, solidarity, and song.
Is… (Dir: Alex Mazonowicz)
An abstract split screen black and white film which explores themes and ideas of what recovery is and could be.
Panel Biographies
Dr Rachel Genn
Rachel Genn works at Manchester Writing School, collaborating with the School of Digital Arts (SODA). As a neuroscientist she worked at The Institute of Psychiatry in London and held a Royal Society Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia from 1999-2001. She has written two novels: The Cure (2011) and What You Could Have Won (2020). She was a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence (2016) creating The National Facility for the Regulation of Regret, spanning installation art, VR and film (ASFF 2016; SXSW 2017) and recently showed her film Battledress (co-created with Debbie Ballin from SODA) – a film about female fashion and fighting- at Aviva Studios Fete of Britain (2023) and SXSW (2024) SODA showcase. She has written for Granta, Los Angeles Review of Books and New Statesman and is working on a hybrid collection of non-fiction about the experience of longing and addiction to regret. She became a member of Portraits of Recovery’s Recoverist Union in 2025.
Maddie Kitchen
Maddie is Creative Director of the Recovery Street Film Festival and founder of Sobriety Films UK CIC. She delivers filmmaking workshops for Phoenix Futures, CGL, Turning Point, and the NHS, and has co-produced projects with Rethink Mental Illness and the Scottish Recovery Consortium. A recovery champion for the Forward Trust, she has judged the Athens and Dublin Short Film Festivals.
After a career in journalism, she directed a short film for Channel 4 and a documentary for ITV. Their debut documentary, How I Got Sober, premiered at the 2019 US Reel Recovery Film Festival, followed by SING, a top ten finalist at the 2019 Recovery Street Film Festival. In recovery, she founded Sobriety Films UK in 2017, a lived-experience-led collective promoting recovery, diversity, and inclusion through films and workshops.
David McCollom
David McCollom has led DMC Media for more than 19 years, bringing deep lived experience to his work. DMC earned first place at the Recovery Street Film Festival in 2016 with Hope Inside, a film David created at HMP Wymott. In 2025, they were joint winners with The Light Side, produced in collaboration with Lucy Rocca from Soberistas.
David also teaches a 10-week filmmaking course for people in recovery from addiction and mental health challenges, delivering this both in the community and within prisons. Alongside this work, DMC Media produces films for organisations across the UK.
Dominic Pillai
Dominic is the Curator of Social Engagement at Portraits of Recovery. As a practicing filmmaker and artist with lived experience of recovery, Dominic has showcased work at Cannes Film Festival, Tate Liverpool, The Lowry, Folkestone Triennial and BBC 6 Music.
About the Filmmakers
Lucy Rocca – The Light Side
Lucy Rocca, from Sheffield, is a sobriety coach, bestselling author and the founder of Soberistas — a UK‑based online community and social network originally created to support people, especially women, who want to reduce or stop drinking alcohol but do not necessarily identify with traditional recovery models like Alcoholics Anonymous.
Lucy’s own journey to sobriety began after years of heavy and regular drinking. In 2011, a serious incident related to alcohol led her to quit drinking entirely. Finding limited support for people who did not fit the stereotypical image of addiction, she launched Soberistas in 2012 as an anonymous, non‑judgmental space for connection, peer support and shared experiences.
Since then, Soberistas has grown into a global community with tens of thousands of registered members and has become one of the most well‑known online resources for people exploring sobriety outside traditional recovery settings.
Lucy is also a certified life coach and NLP practitioner. She has written multiple books on alcohol and sobriety, focusing on changing cultural norms around drinking, reducing stigma and empowering people to make sustainable lifestyle changes.
Her work emphasises compassionate, non‑shame‑based support, and she continues to coach, speak and create resources to help people rebuild their lives free from the influence of alcohol.
Kayleigh Gibbons – Reach
Kayleigh Gibbons is an animator, filmmaker, and lecturer in Animation and VFX at SGS College and the University of the West of England. A UWE Animation graduate, she has worked professionally in children’s television and independent animation. She wrote and directed the short films Reach, a story about finding the courage to ask for help, and Featherweight, which explores family and grief. Gibbons continues to create expressive, character-driven animated work while teaching the next generation of animators.
Reach, was the runner up at RSFF 2025, it was conceived as a 7-minute film for the BFI and Studio Panda. You can see the full version on the RSFF website. When accepting her award, she explained:
“I told the BFI I was an alcoholic and wanted to make a film about those first difficult steps of realising I had a problem and they were like ‘great, go ahead!’”
She said: “This film is inspired by the first step towards recovery – the most difficult task of reaching out for help. The story conveys the deep sense of isolation I felt, as if sitting inside an ice cube, oblivious to the warmth and connection just beyond.
A quote from the AA book that resonates is: ‘It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.’
I’ve used animation to express thoughts and feelings from a deeper place. Moments of big change often inspire me, and creativity has given me a way to both express and make sense of these experiences.”
Reach was very well received at all the RSFF screening events prior to the awards ceremony. At a closed screening for Ophelia House, the UK’s only solely trauma-informed rehab for women, it received 10/10 scores. Comments included “incredible”, “so relatable, I loved it” and “makes me want to learn animation to tell my own story”.
Alex Black and Laura Roberts – Sons of Jericho
Alex Black is a Staffordshire-based filmmaker who works with The Detox Factor as a cinematographer, writer, and assistant director. He helps create films and creative projects that amplify recovery stories, using his technical and storytelling skills to support the organisation’s mission of expressing hope and lived experience through the arts. His 16-year-old daughter Daisy, a budding creative, assisted in the making of Sons of Jericho.
Laura Roberts is a Staffordshire-based Creative Producer and collaborator with The Detox Factor. She co-created Sons of Jericho alongside Alex Black. The film tells the story of men discovering hope and community through recovery and won joint first prize at the 2025 Recovery Street Film Festival. Through her work, Laura transforms lived experiences of addiction into powerful, inspiring stories using the art of film and storytelling.
Sons of Jericho formed at Jericho House in Derby, a charity that helps men recover from addiction and offending.
Alex Mazonowicz – IS
Alex Mazonowicz from Brighton is a musician, editor, and recovery-arts advocate. His own journey through addiction and recovery inspired his commitment to using creative expression as a tool for healing, community-building, and social change.
He is co-founder and a key figure in the Addiction Recovery Arts Network (ARA Network), and editor of its quarterly publication Performing Recovery, which showcases art, music, writing, and performance created by—and for—people in recovery.
Alex believes that “the opposite of addiction is creation.” For him, recovery is not only about abstinence—it’s about reclaiming identity, rediscovering joy, reconnecting with community, and using creative arts as a form of self-expression, healing, and challenging stigma. Through music, writing, editing, and community-building, he works to normalise and celebrate recovery as a creative, hopeful, and socially engaged journey.
Michael Close – It’s Magical
Michael Close is a recovery coach in Barnsley, working with Barnsley Recovery Steps. Drawing on his own lived experience of addiction and recovery, he supports individuals through one-to-one mentoring and group sessions, helping them build confidence, stability, and community. Known for his empathy and leadership, he also represents the service at local recovery events and promotes awareness around addiction and wellbeing.
“I did come into this service a broken man with an addiction to alcohol. I was totally lost but found somewhere that understood me and my addiction. A place that didn’t judge, only encouraged.
Creativity was my focus whilst in recovery and helped me find myself again. I’m an accomplished pianist, but addiction took that away from me for years. Music and creative arts are now my main tools when trying to inspire others through addiction. Incidentally, it was the Recovery Street Film Festival that gave me the purpose to learn how to film and edit (self-taught, please don’t judge me!!!)”
“There were a couple of ideas for a film this year given the theme of ‘Creative Healing’. It involved both James’s. The first idea was inspired by a visit to Florence and the works of Michelangelo’s ‘David’ but seemed a stretch to complete. The second idea was, of course, It’s Magical—a similar story to me, recovery through creativity. It was James Clark’s love of art and fashion that gave him the purpose to carry on and push through, which we agreed would be our choice of film to make.
We put together a film committee which ended up consisting of myself, James Clark, and James Mosley. We all played a part in the making of this film. We all learned a lot about each other and about the process of documenting and portraying through the medium of film. I’m grateful to the Recovery Street Film Festival; it is inspiring and is fast becoming a valued institution in the recovery community.”
An event for Portraits of Recovery’s DRY26, a brand-new arts programme that enriches the Dry January experience through the power of arts and culture.
