SarahCunningham
Cinematographer
'By turns fuzzy-dreamy and jarringly vivid' was how the Hollywood Reporter described Sarah's cinematography on Flatland, Jenna Bass' contemporary feminist western set in South Africa's Karoo desert, which in 2019 opened the Panorama programme of the Berlinale and won best African feature at the Jo'burg International Film Festival. In 2017 Sarah's 1st feature, Miguel Clara Vasconcelos' Encontro Silencioso, won Best Portuguese Feature at IndieLisboa, the country's largest national film festival. Her third feature, THE BANISHING, is a UK production, and will be released in 2020. A period horror directed by Chris Smith and starring Sean Harris and Jessica Brown-Findlay, it is currently in post.
Sarah's work has screened in festivals all over the world, from Berlin to Cannes, Toronto to Rio. Her two self-directed documentaries, Birds Get Vertigo Too and Like Love, picked up more than a dozen awards, including for cinematography, while the BSC has showcased her work in their Emerging Cinematographers Night.
Sarah is passionate, dedicated, and keenly sensitive to accidental beauty. She is equally at home with film as with digital and loves being able to work in different contexts and languages.
Sarah is a founding member of CUT IT, a crew-led initiative which is challenging our failure as an industry to act proportionately in response to the climate crisis. She is a member of Illuminatrix, a UK collective of experienced female cinematographers, believing that visibility matters.
On her journey to becoming a DP she has worked as operator and second unit DP for the likes of Robbie Ryan and Ken Loach, Guy Maddin and Gavin Finney. She graduated with distinction in cinematography from the prestigious national film school of France, La Fémis and previously read Classics at Cambridge.