Figur

A painter’s life and work begins to transform after a series of dream-like occurrences in his rural Scottish surroundings

  • Lewis Cranston
    Director
    The Watergaw
  • Lewis Cranston
    Writer
    The Watergaw
  • Anton McPhilemy
    Writer
    Ritchie, The Watergaw
  • Lewis Cranston
    Producer
    The Watergaw
  • Strath Martin
    Key Cast
    "The Painter"
    The Watergaw, Gowk, Dog Days
  • Emily Winter
    Key Cast
    "The Figure"
  • Jonathan Gardner
    Director of Photography
    The Watergaw
  • Lewis Cranston
    Editor
  • Anton McPhilemy
    Editor
  • Joel Hewett
    1st Assistant Director
  • Juan Catalano
    Composer
    Gala & Kiwi
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Mystery
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 13, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    7,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    No Dialogue
  • Shooting Format:
    Arri Alexa Mini
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1.66:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Lewis Cranston

Lewis Cranston is a Glasgow and London based filmmaker and a graduate of Edinburgh Napier’s Screen Academy Scotland. His final year film 'The Watergaw' premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2024 and was nominated for the Young Scottish Filmmaker Prize at Glasgow Short Film Festival. His work is influenced by slow cinema, the writings of James Hogg and Italo Calvino and the paintings associated with German Romanticism. His films often explore memory, absence and the emotional resonance of landscape, particularly within a Scottish context. 'Figur' is his latest short film.

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Director Statement

‘Figur’ came out of a desire to make something concise in its narrative and thematic focus, yet ambitious in its world-building and design. Working with my co-writer Anton McPhilemy, I wanted to explore a single image - a painting. But not just as an object, but as a process of translation. The film considers how elements of the world, and ultimately people, are translated into art: into something fixed and meaningful from life.

At its core, the film is about this act of translation - what we choose to carry into an image, what is lost, and how meaning is constructed through that process. It is also, personal to me, a film about loss and the attempt to hold onto a person or a time in life that can no longer be reached and the eventual acceptance of this fate.

The film also explores the idea of the figure itself: what a human presence or shape signifies within an image, and how it can hold memory, absence, and emotional weight. This is something I’ve been drawn to in my previous work and it is deeply influenced by the tradition of German Romantic painting. The questions the film asks about representation, presence, and the relationship between people and landscape are closely aligned with those explored by the Romantics through use of the “rückenfigur” (backfacing-figure) - a word which has inspired the film’s title.

With ‘Figur’, I wanted to create a film that feels both grounded and intangible, where image and sound carry the emotional and narrative weight, and where the boundaries between the real and the remembered begin to blur