Give as a gift
RestFest Film Festival is honored to present the World Premiere of Sop's newest work: 'We Year', streaming June 15-28, 2026.
When you begin watching, you will have 14 days to finish. Just be sure to begin watching before the end of the day on June 28!
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About the Film:
A mixed media, moving-image (love) letter to others with energy-limiting conditions. Using 16mm direct animation, archival & new footage, poetic voiceover, and an ethereal soundscape, artist Sop immerses the viewer into the both isolating and unifying experience of a chronic illness flare during a hot summer indoors.
There are 3 versions included in this screening, each with different access measures available.
*** Access: this version has open captions, which were stylized by the artist. If you'd prefer to watch without captions, or with closed captions, which are not stylized, you can find that option by scrolling down on the right hand. There is also an audio described/visually described version, also available by scrolling down on the right hand side of this screening.
Synopsis:
‘We Year’ portrays a narrowed and claustrophobic view of a hot summer indoors whilst experiencing an ME/CFS relapse. Houseplants die from a lack of care, insomnia thrives, there are battles with medication and stinky t-shirts, and the domineering presence of a wearable overarches all. A 16mm direct animation translation of this wearable’s ‘energy bars’ acts as a running measure of ‘crip-time’; Hi8 footage from the artist's archive of the outdoors sits next to digital footage of their immediate inside-the-house world; and a narrative - at times claustrophobic, ritualistic, or joyfully expansive - meet to describe the knotty, non-linear, chronically ill experience, with the curtailments that they must endure. Meant as a (love) letter to other people with energy limiting conditions, the artist ends with a message of solidarity: that we do not walk this path alone, even if we often are alone.
About the Artist:
Sop (they/them/theirs) is a torn and crooked leaf, a root embedded in the dirt, a shoot reaching to the sky. An artist working in crip time with words, sound and moving image.
They work primarily with nature which they use as a portal to interrogate their own experience of existing in a chronically ill body, and how other disabled and chronically ill bodies interact with and relate to nature and the natural world. Their work tends to centre modes of sociality, beginning with personal narrative, then expanding through dialogue with their crip community to include other bodies’ concerns.
They are currently working towards a book about grief, gender, chronic illness and ghosts, and a moving image work about crip sex and volcanos.
They have shown work at Wellcome Collection, British Museum, ICA, Cubitt, LUX, and Whitechapel Gallery; and their work is included in publications ‘Documents of Contemporary Art: Walking’. Ed. Tom Jeffreys; ‘Botanical Architecture: Plants, Buildings and Us’, by Paul Dobraszczyk and ‘Bodies of Sound’. Eds. Irene Revell and Sarah Shin.
They are anti-clock, pro-informal-networks-of-care; anti-normality/standardisation; pro-interpersonal-dedication.
They live and work in South East London.
RestFest Film Festival is honored to present the World Premiere of Sop's newest work: 'We Year', streaming June 15-28, 2026.
When you begin watching, you will have 14 days to finish. Just be sure to begin watching before the end of the day on June 28!
---------
About the Film:
A mixed media, moving-image (love) letter to others with energy-limiting conditions. Using 16mm direct animation, archival & new footage, poetic voiceover, and an ethereal soundscape, artist Sop immerses the viewer into the both isolating and unifying experience of a chronic illness flare during a hot summer indoors.
There are 3 versions included in this screening, each with different access measures available.
*** Access: this version has open captions, which were stylized by the artist. If you'd prefer to watch without captions, or with closed captions, which are not stylized, you can find that option by scrolling down on the right hand. There is also an audio described/visually described version, also available by scrolling down on the right hand side of this screening.
Synopsis:
‘We Year’ portrays a narrowed and claustrophobic view of a hot summer indoors whilst experiencing an ME/CFS relapse. Houseplants die from a lack of care, insomnia thrives, there are battles with medication and stinky t-shirts, and the domineering presence of a wearable overarches all. A 16mm direct animation translation of this wearable’s ‘energy bars’ acts as a running measure of ‘crip-time’; Hi8 footage from the artist's archive of the outdoors sits next to digital footage of their immediate inside-the-house world; and a narrative - at times claustrophobic, ritualistic, or joyfully expansive - meet to describe the knotty, non-linear, chronically ill experience, with the curtailments that they must endure. Meant as a (love) letter to other people with energy limiting conditions, the artist ends with a message of solidarity: that we do not walk this path alone, even if we often are alone.
About the Artist:
Sop (they/them/theirs) is a torn and crooked leaf, a root embedded in the dirt, a shoot reaching to the sky. An artist working in crip time with words, sound and moving image.
They work primarily with nature which they use as a portal to interrogate their own experience of existing in a chronically ill body, and how other disabled and chronically ill bodies interact with and relate to nature and the natural world. Their work tends to centre modes of sociality, beginning with personal narrative, then expanding through dialogue with their crip community to include other bodies’ concerns.
They are currently working towards a book about grief, gender, chronic illness and ghosts, and a moving image work about crip sex and volcanos.
They have shown work at Wellcome Collection, British Museum, ICA, Cubitt, LUX, and Whitechapel Gallery; and their work is included in publications ‘Documents of Contemporary Art: Walking’. Ed. Tom Jeffreys; ‘Botanical Architecture: Plants, Buildings and Us’, by Paul Dobraszczyk and ‘Bodies of Sound’. Eds. Irene Revell and Sarah Shin.
They are anti-clock, pro-informal-networks-of-care; anti-normality/standardisation; pro-interpersonal-dedication.
They live and work in South East London.