1909. Hutton, Lancashire. Martha lives a perfectly boring life - pursuing a string of amateur entomological projects, and occasionally wading in the stream at the end of her parents’ garden. But on a beetle-gathering outing, Martha stumbles across the Women’s Suffrage Society North West Organising Committee: an exclusive gang of über-trendy bright young things on a mission to change the world, on a day-trip to her tiny village.

They’re bright and loud and young and radical and, crucially, not from Hutton.

Martha is instantly smitten - with their militancy, with the thought of having friends her own age, but mostly with their de-facto leader Florence. But more than that, this is a ready-made excuse to get out of the place she grew up. Finally, a chance for her to make something of her life. All she needs to do is endear herself to the painfully cool new arrivals, in the hopes of them taking her into the fold.

UNCOOL comes from wanting to give queer female characters fun, genre-bending stories. It smashes together period and ‘00s coming-of-age genres into something big and silly and clashy - for the queer women who spent their formative years watching Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging and the 2005 BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice.  

Martha gets to do everything you see in a classic coming-of-age film: she’s relatably awkward, she’s pathetically smitten, and she heads off on a journey to ‘gets the girl’. She gets to be a person in a way queer characters (and people!) often don’t, and crucially, she does that with all the dramatic period stylings of a classic period drama. This will come through in the aesthetic too: mixing an overarching historical accuracy and period ‘look’ with subtle touches of ‘00s (sharp close-ups, subtle brights, a pop-punk-influenced score), creating a film that feels weird and clashy and slightly stylised, but that also has a lot of warmth, humour and heart.

Ultimately, we want to make something charming, funny and nostalgic. For LGBTQ+ audiences, especially queer women, we hope UNCOOL will resonate with their own experiences and offer them something new in the period drama space. For wider audiences, we hope it’s a universally-relatable story about feeling a bit out of place - and one that sheds light on a unique corner of the LGBTQ+ experience, and gently prods at the queer resonances of a well-trodden piece of history.

Clodagh Chapman

Clodagh Chapman is a writer and director based in Manchester. Her “startlingly inventive” debut short [Irish Film London], FIRST KISS (WITH A GIRL), played in competition at BAFTA-qualifying festivals worldwide, with attendance supported by BFI NETWORK & British Council, and saw her nominated for the Rising Star Award at WXFF. Screenings include London Short Film Festival, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg (both BIFA- & BAFTA-qualifying), Scottish Queer International Film Festival (BAFTA-qualifying), Women X Film Festival, and Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival. She was selected for BFI NETWORK’s Film Hub North 2022 Script Lab, on which UNCOOL was first developed, and she is a current BAFTA Connect member.

In theatre, Clodagh’s work includes BUTTERFLY (VAULT Festival), dubbed “a brilliant show full of heart” [The Guardian], LADYFRIENDS [a period drama] (Hope Mill Theatre & UK Tour), supported using public funding through Arts Council England, and SINK (HOME Manchester; in development). Other credits include co-directing LOB (Contact Theatre) and dramaturging Jodie Irvine’s DROP IT (in development; R&Ded with The Lowry & Lighthouse Poole), which was shortlisted for the LET Award 2023.

Clodagh holds an MA (Distinction) from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, and has previously been part of development schemes with Film London, Rope Ladder Fiction, National Theatre, Royal Exchange Theatre, Young Vic, and Box of Tricks. She also co-creates new work for stage and screen with young people for the National Theatre and The Lowry.

Outside her work as writer and director, Clodagh is a Programme Adviser for Sheffield DocFest and a reader for the Bush Theatre. Previously, she has previewed submissions for BFI Future Film Festival, and curated sold-out events for BFI London Film Festival and BFI Flare.

Daljinder Johal

Daljinder Johal is a producer and curator alongside working in Development for Hat Trick Productions. With her Midlands-based production company, Little Stitch Productions, she produced her first Manchester short ‘MUG’ examining the grief and isolation of a mixed race young girl (Haiesha Mistry), winning ‘Best Film To Pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test’ at Bech Test Film Fest and receiving a nomination as Best Producer at Women X Film Festival.

Other shorts across the UK include the BFI NETWORK-funded LGBT+ working-class western, Hope Ain’t Right, with a team of neurodivergent creatives in Birmingham; she co-produced Fairview Park in Leeds spotlighting the life and unjust death of Declan Flynn with support from the BFI NETWORK, Dublin Pride and Lush Cosmetics. As Producer for Vathana Suganya Suppiah’s latest short Ratthum (BLOOD), funded by BFI NETWORK; the film had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in June and has screened at London Film Festival and Newport Beach Film Festival.

With work often platforming underrepresented voices in the film and the arts, she has found a niche in producing thought-provoking and often joyful narratives with characters who are complex beyond more obvious labels of diversity.

She also works as a Production Manager and Assistant Producer including for Amit Kaur’s Cuppa Chai (BFI NETWORK) and Ruth Sutoyė’s poetry film Matriarch’s Garden.

In theatre, she most recently produced the London run of Hannah Kumari’s ENG-ER-LAND at Arcola Theatre, produces audio projects for the BBC and the International Curators Forum and is the Midlands Impact Producer for Reclaim the Frame.

UNCOOL is a sparky new queer female project, led by two queer female filmmakers with track records of making compelling regional work, gaining extensive industry recognition and playing in major film festivals worldwide. Following individual success with shorts, this is a filmmaking relationship developed over two years with the hope of bringing more joyful queer stories to our screens.

We’re both passionate about developing work outside of London, and continuing to develop regional talent, including those from many intersecting underrepresented backgrounds. We plan to do this for UNCOOL:bringing the same industry recognition and opportunity to filmmakers in the North and Midlands.

Finally, this film touches upon lesser-known regional and queer suffragette histories. In addition to aiming for festival screenings, we want to bring this film to LGBT+ and female-focused events in the North West, reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Risks and challenges lie at the very core of filmmaking, but we plan to draw upon our experience on successfully delivering many ambitious projects.

We have purposefully kept our period locations low-cost and manageable to source. Practically, we’ve both managed complex projects with five- and six-figure budgets, and this is Daljinder’s second period film. We will work with incredibly talented and hardworking people built from our existing contact books, as well as finding new collaborators. 

We also already have the majority of our funding in place. Your support will enable us to bring on board more earlier-career talent, increase production value for set and costume, and generally be the special sparkle for a truly memorable film that delivers on our big silly queer period drama ambitions! 

When the campaign is over, we will keep you up to date with the production, post production and delivery of ‘UNCOOL’ and all Greenlit reward tiers to make sure that you are fully in the loop. If you want to ask us a question, do email hello@littlestitchproductions.com at any point and we will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible. Any problems, delays and hurdles successfully managed, as well as all cool things that happen along the way, will be included on our respective social media platforms as well as on all Little Stitch Productions channels. Give us a shout!