Be Kind Productions makes award-winning short films for charities and causes, and advises filmmakers on getting shorts made and seen. Selected at festivals across four continents, including the Academy Award–qualifying New York International Children's Film Festival.
What we do
Be Kind Productions makes short films about the things that shape us — and puts them to work.
Bullying. loneliness and bias. Disability. Migration and survival. Our films embrace real social issues, and they entertain too! Stories built to hold an audience, not lecture it. We're interested in what people do for each other when it costs them something — and in stories that leave you lighter than they found you, without pretending the world is easy.
What happens after the credits matters as much as the film itself.
Itsy, our multi-award-winning short about an anxious, guarded woman who learns compassion from an unlikely friendship, became the catalyst for the Kindness in School Programme™, run by the charity Be Kind Movement and delivered in UK schools to build emotional intelligence in children and young people through short film. All our short films do the same work: a story first, then a conversation. Films that start in a festival and end up in a classroom.
That's what we mean by social impact. Not a message bolted onto a film, but a film good enough that people want to talk about it afterwards.
What you won’t find here
Cruelty as entertainment. Cynicism as a worldview. Despair dressed up as depth. Not because we look away from darkness — our stories go to hard places — but because we believe the braver creative choice is showing what people do with the darkness.
The films
Drama, comedy and documentary — united by one question: what does kindness actually cost, and what does it change?
Our films have played at festivals across four continents and are used in UK classrooms to start conversations that last longer than the credits.
Helping Hands (2024) — "Actions speak louder…" A shy, lonely teenager's small act of kindness sets off a chain of good deeds, told through a cast of characterful hands. Official Selection at the New York International Children's Film Festival, an Academy Award–qualifying festival, alongside Berlin Lift-Off, Canada International Children's Film Festival, Birmingham Film Festival, Indie Leeds and Kids First! — and a Finalist at the San Antonio Film Festival.
Itsy (2019) — Best Performance, Best Female Director and Creativity Award on the festival circuit, with an original score by Segun Akinola, lead composer of BBC's Doctor Who and a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit.
Teem Khan (2022) — a first-person documentary on migration, survival and resilience; Finalist at the Prisma – Rome Independent Film Awards.
Newbie — a comedy-drama: Mr Ball just needs to survive his first day.
We've also executive produced films by other teams, including In Too Deep and You & Me Makes Three.
Our roots
Be Kind Productions was founded by producer Premila Puri, who also founded the registered charity Be Kind Movement — a decade of using story to make kindness the norm, at school, at work and on screen.
