No Budget. No Backing. No Problem. How This London Filmmaker Beat the Odds

What started in a basement film school ended up on the international festival circuit.

SPECIAL GUEST POST:

My name is Hugo Santa Cruz, I’m a filmmaker from London and a former student at the Raindance Film School’s 3-week intensive course. My latest feature film, Modern Women, a comedy about 5 women suffering the consequences of the London Housing Crisis, just got an official selection at the prestigious Austin Film Festival. Known as the premier “Writer’s Festival”, it celebrates the art and craft of storytelling by uniting filmmakers, screenwriters, and creative professionals from around the world.

But let’s go back to where the story begins in the summer of 2019. Leicester Square was getting pimped up for the premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but the real excitement was already happening in the bowels of a basement in Craven Street.

After spending a couple of years honing my screenwriting and realising that it was unlikely anyone was going to come and give me money to make these screenplays filled with punk rock subversion. I decided to find out first-hand what this Elliot Grove guy was onto with his DIY film school for outrageously independent misfits.

At Raindance, I found myself immersed in the well-oiled machine that is their 3-week intensive course, where I was tutored by Justin Shevlin and Simon Hunter with their inspirational lessons and practice sessions. Really great vibes all around and fantastic cups of tea. Most importantly, after those three weeks that quite frankly went by in no time, I left Raindance with a sense that I COULD ACTUALLY DO THIS.

The following year, COVID hit, but my filmmaking momentum was already in full flow. I wrote a Fassbinder-type film that was feasible to make with just over 10K, and off we went. The result was a film called My London Lullaby, which premiered in some of the most prestigious non-Category A Film Festivals out there and even competed “against” BAFTA-winning and Cannes Official Selection films at the Efebo D’Oro Film Festival in Italy. The film eventually found its way into a couple of streaming sites, too.

By 2022, the film industry scene was already starting to change, and my so-called big break into the industry never came, so… What do you do when you make a successful no-budget film and the men with the suitcase full of money don’t show up at your door? The answer is always: MAKE ANOTHER FILM.

And… So, I did. Again… And again! With Modern Women completing my trilogy of state-of-the-nation no-budget films, taking me to “new heights,” I feel it’s a good time to look back and rejoice with the lovelies from the Raindance Film School who spurred me on and got me going in this journey. To be continued…

ABOUT

Hugo Santa Cruz is a prolific London-based writer, director, and producer whose work blends experimental form with sharp socio-political critique.  A former musician whose songs featured in acclaimed series such as Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, Santa Cruz transitioned to filmmaking to explore themes of identity, power, and social change. He is the founder of anti Kino, a cooperative production company committed to countercultural, independent storytelling.

His debut feature, My London Lullaby (2021), examined the lives of Europeans in post-Brexit Britain and won the Special Jury Prize at Italy’s Efebo d’Oro Film Festival.  His follow-up, The Fifth Generation (2023), is a darkly comic, multilingual exploration of climate politics featuring Leigh Gill (Joker), awarded Best Feature Film at the Brighton Rocks International Film Festival (UK).  His 2025 housing-crisis comedy Modern Women is an Official Selection at the Austin Film Festival, featuring Ian Reddington and a soundtrack that includes a song by The Cure. Known for his bold narrative structures and uncompromising vision, Santa Cruz continues to push boundaries in independent cinema.