London – As the curtain falls on this year’s PhotoMonth — London’s month-long celebration of photography — the festival’s final night promises to be one of reflection, artistry, and quiet transcendence. On 30 October, The Source will host the closing screening and party of the festival, featuring the acclaimed documentary Mother Vera — a fittingly contemplative conclusion to a programme that has explored the many ways images capture, reveal, and transform our human experience.
Running from 2 October to 3 November 2025, PhotoMonth has once again transformed London’s “E” postcodes into a living gallery. From Kennington to Mile End, Clerkenwell to Camberwell, Hackney to Stratford, over 50 exhibitions have filled the city’s museums, libraries, cafés, and alternative spaces with a vibrant mix of photography, film, and dialogue. Alongside the exhibitions, the festival has hosted artist talks, workshops, portfolio reviews, and a special AutoPhoto portrait competition marking the centenary of the photo booth — an ode to spontaneous self-portraiture that has defined a century of photographic intimacy.
Amid this rich programme, the film strand has offered audiences a chance to explore the intersections between photography and cinema — where stillness meets motion, and image becomes story. It is within this spirit that Mother Vera finds its home.
Winner of the Grierson Documentary Award at its UK debut at the 68th BFI London Film Festival, Mother Vera is the debut feature by Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, produced by Laura Shacham for She Makes Productions. Shot in arresting black and white, the film is a visual meditation on solitude, memory, and redemption. The film will be shown at The Source.
Vera, a Belarusian Orthodox nun, has spent two decades in a monastery on the outskirts of Minsk, living among men undergoing addiction rehabilitation. When a conversation with her mother stirs long-suppressed memories, she is compelled to revisit the tragic events that led her to this secluded existence. What unfolds is a deeply human story — one that moves between guilt and grace, silence and awakening, confinement and spiritual freedom.
Described by The Film Verdict as a “sublime and sensorial debut feature,” Mother Vera invites viewers into a world rarely seen on screen — a cloistered space where faith and fragility coexist in delicate balance. Through its contemplative pacing and luminous cinematography, the film evokes the timeless beauty of still photography while carrying the emotional weight of lived experience.
The screening at The Source will be followed by a Q&A with directors Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, offering audiences an intimate conversation about the creative process behind the film and its photographic roots.
As festival-goers gather one last time, the evening will mark not only the end of PhotoMonth 2025 but also a moment of collective reflection — on image, on faith, and on the human capacity for renewal. With Mother Vera, PhotoMonth concludes as it began: with the conviction that photography and film, in their quietest and most powerful forms, can illuminate the unseen.
Booking : https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/photomonth-mother-vera-alys-tomlinson-and-cecile-embleton-tickets-1689291529439?aff=oddtdtcreator
Thank you
Francesca