Have a cool sci-fi movie idea? Want to try out creating a movie yourself? For budding filmmakers out there, Sci-Fi-London’s 48 hour film can help you do all that. In fact, it’s been showing off the talent, ingenuity and creativity over the past 15 years!
Organised by the same brilliant folk behind Sci-Fi-London (a UK-based film festival that brings together the best sci-fi films), the 48 hour film challenge was started in 2008 because they saw that a lot of filmmakers felt they couldn’t make a sci-fi movie due to budget.
“What budget’ we said? Sci-fi is story-led, it’s a backdrop, a way of looking at things differently – it is not reliant on special effects budgets,” the organisers behind the challenge tell us.
“Our first challenge had a small jury consisting of SFX magazine editor, David Bradley, film director, John Landis (American Werewolf in London) and actor, Emily Booth,” the organisers say. “We had a fantastic response, and 70 films were made in that first weekend!”
That first year, an effects artist called Gareth Edwards put a small team together, which included Daniel Pemberton on music and sound design.
“This was Gareth’s first film as director and stood out amongst the entries as it looked so ‘cinematic’, not something shot on Mini-DV,” the organisers say. “However, Gareth shot the film on a Sony camcorder but used a special adaptor that allowed him to use ‘cinema’ quality lenses – thus the ‘filmic’ look. He won that year and was invited to pitch some ideas to Vertigo films for a feature. As they said, ‘if you can do that in a weekend with no budget, do you have any feature ideas?’ Gareth pitched them Monsters and as he said, ‘I showed them my short and they were instantly sold’.”
The break for him was incredible, following Monsters he was offered Godzilla and then Star Wars: Rogue One. His latest film The Creator was released in 2023.
Skip forward a few years, and the challenge was getting around 120 films completed each year. Amateurs and even young kids all take part, and even film professionals like the editor of the recent Dr Who series, Robbie Gibbons, and Ridley Scott’s FX house, THE MILL have done it. Among the other alumni are David Hasselhoff, Thomas Middleditch, Tom Payne and Daisy Ridley, whose first proper film role was in the short film called ‘Blue Season’. Many of the films made for the event have gone on to other festivals and won many awards.
Since it started, the challenge has seen films with amazing special effects, songs with cool characters, music and plots – it even had the first film written by an A.I (called ‘Sunspring’).
In 2018, Chris Reading and the Shakespeare Sisters got together to make a sci-fi 48-hour movie. They called it ‘Unreason’ and it was about two sisters who own a vintage store and find a time machine. In March 2025, that short became a feature-length version, Time Travel Is Dangerous, starring Johnny Vegas, Jane Horrocks and narrated by Stephen Fry, and was released in cinemas across the UK. Watch that original short here and check out the movie trailer below…
Over the years, the challenge has had amazing jurors including Guillermo Del Toro, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joe Dante, Vincenzo Natali, Warwick Davis, Frank Spotnitz and more. It’s also had had authors like Adrian Tchaikovsky, scientists like Jim Al-Khalili and ESA’s Nadine Boersma. It even had Dr Sian Proctor, the first Afro-American Woman to pilot a spaceship, taking a SpaceX into space. This year’s jury includes actor Brian Bovell (Andor), author Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shroud) and director Gavin Rothery(Archive).
This year’s 48 challenge will take place on 26-28 April. Entry for those who fancy it is easy – get a team together (of any size), sign up at https://48hour.sci-fi-london.com and on the challenge weekend, go make a 5-min short! Good luck!
