Prano Bailey-Bond

It’s been an exciting few years for fans of British horror. Matthew Holness’ Possum, Remi Weekes’ His House and Rose Glass’ Saint Maud are just a couple of the films that have thrilled audiences in recent memory, and now Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor is set to join their ranks. Set against the backdrop of the 1980s video nasty moral panic, the film stars Niamh Algar as Enid, a young woman with a troubled past who works in film censorship and begins to obsess over a director she believes holds the key to her sister’s disappearance. It’s Welsh director Bailey-Bond’s debut feature, but with a strong body of shorts and music videos under her belt, Censor arrives a fully-formed retro delight.

Bailey-Bond: I was reading an article about the Hammer Horror era and how they looked at censoring those films, and there was this detail about this vague rule that blood on breasts was always going to be cut from films because they believed it made men likely to commit rape. I thought, ‘Well weren’t most of the film censors men, and if it’s going to be more likely to make men commit rape, what protects the censor from losing control in that way after seeing those images?’ So it started with this slightly childish thought about this male censor who starts to worry he’s being influenced. He goes out on a date with a woman who