26;3

A short-form documentary film exploring the truths and prejudices surrounding ignorance and myths about home education. The film follows the life of a Norfolk family, whose two youngest children are home-educated.

  • Delfina Witkowska
    Director
    Ember, The Meadows
  • Jess Hulusi
    Writer
  • Mariel Ferrer
    Producer
    The Meadows
  • Bram Kwantes
    Sound Design
    Guilty Pleasure, Booze City, Headlines
  • Louanne Honey
    Editor
    Maude Clare, Scapegoat
  • Will Komba
    Cinematographer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Observational Documentary, Realism
  • Runtime:
    7 minutes 15 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 7, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    200 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Delfina Witkowska

After working on an award-winning film in the Adobe Youth Voices program in 2014, Polish-born British student filmmaker Delfina put all her efforts into training to become a filmic storyteller.
Although primarily an editor, Delfina’s passion for the topic of alternative education for children gave her the courage to step outside of her comfort zone and tell their story her way.
Working with a strong team of convinced and initially unconvinced individuals, her first victory was educating and changing the minds of her crew - the most recent being the completion of her directorial debut with 26;3.

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Director Statement

My personal background is that I had a rough start to my relationship with the education system; I was terrified of school as a child. Back in Poland, when I was first sent to a nursery, I was livid and inconsolable. I didn’t stay there very long because I hated the structure, I hated that we weren’t allowed to learn some things based on the government’s pre-decided agenda of what kids could and couldn’t learn. Then, as I moved to England, my first day at school was rather different as I hadn’t yet gained a proper grasp of the language. I think in this context, the way I viewed school also changed as motivated by fear, but it had the opposite outcome: I became a Hermione Granger type, always working hard academically and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t get out of a book. I was conditioned into blind obedience and would feel terrified of breaking rules set by people who I would never even meet.
This continued all throughout primary and secondary school and my first eureka moment was in college. I met a young man, now my partner, who was a year younger than all of our peers, due to having until that point been home-educated and taken his few GCSE exams externally. It opened my eyes to a whole new world, and I became very drawn to the family, to this day learning more and more from the now grown-up children coming out of a very different decade of education than I had.
I want to home-educate my children, too, and so I’ve been making the joke that some people read a book to learn more about a topic, whereas I go and make a documentary about it.