Clio Barnard on her Wellcome Trust and BFI Screenwriting Fellowship

Just over a year ago it was announced that Clio Barnard would be following her success with the experimental docudrama The Arbor and then The Selfish Giant by immersing herself into the cutting-edge worlds of neuroscience, genetics and human-development research, courtesy of a year-long residency at the Wellcome Trust. As inaugural winner of the Wellcome Trust and BFI Screenwriting Fellowship in association with Film4 – “in recognition of her original, enquiring and visionary screenwriting” – she would be able follow her curiosity through the Trust’s collections, visit its research centres and confer with its experts with a view to informing and enriching her next screenplay and beyond. 

Having passed the reigns to her successor Jonathan Glazer in December 2014, she sat down with us back at the Wellcome Centre to talk about her experiences with the fellowship and how it might influence her future work.