Peter Treherne | 2026 | UK | 103’ | digital | English spoken 

Matter of Britain is an Arthurian fantasy and ethnographic documentary rooted in the landscape and social fabric of Mayfield, East Sussex. Produced in collaboration with more than 300 local people, the film unfolds as a collective act of storytelling. It interweaves documentary observations of contemporary life with staged performance, as community members assume the roles of knights, anchorites and devils in an enactment of a Quest for the Holy Grail. 

The film moves between scenes of labour, ritual gathering and play as it slips seamlessly into moments of mythic pageantry. A quiet tension develops between the Grail’s legendary capacity to restore the wasted land and the contemporary realities of ecological degradation. Moving between the ancient and the present, Matter of Britain explores how myths endure not as relics, but as shared practices continually remade through community. Cinema itself becomes reframed as a form of civic ritual.

Followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.