Joan Hillery’s That Great British Documentary is scheduled to screen with a Q&A at the Croydon International Film Festival on Tuesday, 17 November 2026. The organiser’s listing puts the event at 7:30 p.m. The screening gives a film completed in 2023 a new occasion for audiences to discuss how a filmmaker’s family history intersects with a larger account of Britain and its media.

The Croydon listing describes a project shot over ten years and prompted by the death of Hillery’s father. It presents the film as a personal exploration of her Black and white heritage, Britain’s colonial past and questions about whose voices appear in British media. Those themes come from the programme description. The film’s conclusions and the audience’s responses are matters for viewers and the scheduled discussion.

A film travelling between audiences

The 1261 Grenada Film Festival lists the work as a 60-minute UK documentary and identifies Hillery as its director and writer. Its listing provides a record of the film in a different exhibition context. In Croydon the screening is part of a new festival programme, with a public conversation advertised after the film. The date is a screening appointment for an existing documentary.

The two festival contexts make a useful comparison. A work about British identity can meet audiences with personal and family histories shaped by different parts of the same past. A screening in the Caribbean may prompt different questions from a screening in a south London borough. In both cases the public has the opportunity to see how Hillery gives those questions shape through one family’s experience.

A filmmaker’s perspective is central to a first-person documentary. Its value can lie in the clarity with which it shows the limits and particularities of what one person can tell. Where a larger history enters the narrative, an audience can ask how the director moved between memory, research and footage. Questions about those choices can make a discussion more precise than a broad debate about representation alone.

A conversation about method

Oxford Brookes University previously hosted Hillery and filmmaker Marcus Jones in a February 2026 discussion about filmmaking, authenticity and the use of AI. Its event description emphasised Hillery’s interest in preserving the spontaneous and personal qualities of storytelling. The Croydon Q&A is a separate event. The earlier appearance gives some background on the director’s publicly discussed approach without establishing what will be said in November.

For an emerging documentary maker, one useful question is what a long production period does to the story. A filmmaker may find that their understanding of an interview changes after a later conversation, or that footage has different meaning after years have passed. Editing then involves deciding how to let the audience see those changes. A Q&A can make the work behind such decisions easier to understand.

The Croydon organiser’s event collection also lists writing and industry sessions under its Women Behind the Lens programme. The documentary screening sits within a wider collection that includes several formats for public engagement. People planning to attend can check the individual event listing for the booking details and any updates, since each session has its own arrangement.

RIM’s coverage of Black British cinema at MUBI Fest London examines another way that a screening and a conversation can bring a film back into public discussion. Croydon’s booking offers an example in documentary, where the director’s own experience is part of the material. The shared programming question is how to give viewers enough context to engage with a film on its own terms.

The event’s value will become clearer through the screening and discussion. The published listing already gives audiences a reason to revisit Hillery’s work, and gives filmmakers a chance to think about how a personal story is presented once it leaves the edit room.

*Illustration — AI-generated conceptual artwork about documentary exhibition and personal archives.*

Why this matters

A public screening can give a personal documentary another life after its initial release. For Black British and diaspora audiences, Croydon’s programme creates space to discuss the film’s treatment of belonging and representation. For filmmakers and exhibitors, the Q&A adds an opportunity to examine the choices behind the work and how a programme can support an audience conversation.

Sources

Topics: Croydon · Joan Hillery · Documentary · Black British cinema · Film festivals

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