Director Max Fisher’s short Rule, Britannia has qualified for consideration at the 99th Academy Awards and is BAFTA-qualifying.
The film, co-written with Ayman Alhussein and Greer Ellison, follows two brothers who steal a fishing boat and head into the English Channel to stop a refugee dinghy. After a night out they treat the trip like a patriotic stunt. Their boat sinks. The people they meant to block pull them aboard. Crowded onto an overloaded dinghy, the swagger drops and the moral certainty goes with it.
Fisher made the film before some of the more extreme real-world protests around small boats and the RNLI. He has said the mindset, not the later headlines, is what he wanted to examine: how fear spreads, how anti-refugee talk moves from argument into action, and what happens when that action fails. The short is fiction. It is not a manual.
The festival run already includes Best Drama at Brighton Rocks International Film Festival and Sunrise Film Festival, plus the Si Spencer Award at Unrestricted View Film Festival. Fisher started as a youth worker using film with vulnerable young people, including refugees and young offenders, then worked on documentary and commercial projects for the Red Cross, Guide Dogs and CALM. Rule, Britannia is his third short. Earlier films played Tampere, Odense, Raindance, Edmonton, San Jose and Encounters. He is developing a first feature.
Sam Topley and Maddy Easton produced. Topley launched the independent studio Tarot in 2025. Easton, a Kodak/BAFTA Short Film Showcase-winning producer, has more than 150 credits and recently produced Fisher’s short Mouse!. Byron McNally is a BAFTA-nominated co-producer.
Olivier winner Michael Jibson stars, with Tom Page-Turner and Anton Valensi. Jibson won the 2018 Olivier for Hamilton and has appeared in 1917, Bodies and Last Night in Soho. Page-Turner makes his professional debut in the BBC’s Lord of the Flies. Valensi’s credits include The Most Beautiful Man in the World, Luther, Top Boy, Andor, Dune: Part Two and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Stephen Dunne, an Oscar and BAFTA-winning editor, cut the film. Luke Jacobs shot it. Jon Clarke composed the score. Jen Moss handled music supervision.
Fisher is available to discuss nationalism, anti-refugee rhetoric and the line between protest and taking the law to sea. Qualification means the short meets awards-entry rules. It is not a nomination.