Giulia Gandini is a London-based writer/director originally from Italy. An alumna of King’s College London and MET Film School, she has worked on numerous critically acclaimed projects since the beginning of her career – including her award-winning documentary ‘Home Stream’. It was this groundbreaking documentary that brought Giulia and Creative Conscience together in 2019 and which led her to win a Creative Conscience Silver Award in 2020.
Giulia reflects on how making this documentary and being supported by Creative Conscience was a life-changing experience: “I had always dreamt about making a documentary and this project was very different from all the other ones I’d done in the past. I was also supported from the very beginning by Chrissy and Creative Conscience, which made a huge difference.”
‘Home Stream’ is a short documentary revolving around the story of Lily, a woman going through homelessness on the streets of London – filmed solely with an iPhone. Providing context, Giulia explains that the project was realised “with very little money, few resources, and minimal technology – we didn’t use big cameras or anything like that.” Yet, this did not stop Giulia and Lily from creating a final piece that not only has narrative and emotional value, but also social impact and a social message at its core.
In fact, the powerful social message embedded within the documentary was what drove Giulia to pursue this project in the first place. For her, “the whole point of making this film was really to shift the narrative and perspective on homelessness.”
It transpired that this project also shifted Giulia’s career focus: “I’ve changed a lot as a young creative since this experience. Before making this documentary, I would focus on issues like “What’s my voice as a young creative? What’s my style? What’s my selling point? How do I differentiate myself from everybody else out there? Competition can be so fierce, especially in the creative industries, and it can be very hard to feel like you’re worth it and you’re up for the challenge. However, with this project, because I felt so connected to Lily, her experience and her story; I felt free to put all those personal anxieties to one side”.
Giulia goes on to explain that whilst the documentary was released online with few expectations, it quickly went above and beyond, reaching more than 12 million organic views, “it was crazy how viral it went in such a short period of time!” More recognition followed: “we started getting official selections, we got into Oscar-qualifying, BAFTA-qualifying film festivals, we won awards.”
This social impact and compassionate resonance was evident in the audience’s approach to Giulia and Lily: “So many people reached out to Lily and I to say ‘How can I help? Which charities should I donate to, to help with homelessness? How can I support Lily directly?”
With ‘Home Stream’, Giulia and her team have achieved not only individual but also societal success: “By the end, just through the numbers we achieved and the amount of people we touched with that story, we realised that we had created a wide reaching social impact project.”
Talented creatives such as Giulia and inspiring projects such as ‘Home Stream’ help make the world a more compassionate place by creating and fostering profound human connections – and that’s what Creative Conscience is here to do. Thank you Giulia and Lily, you’re amazing. Find out more about Giulia’s project here. https://www.ggandini.com/
Originally written for and published by Creative Conscience.
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