D is for Distance to be released by BFI Distribution on 3 April

The award-winning D is for Distance, a film that celebrates the history of the moving image and documents a life-changing journey by Louis Petit, made by his parents, filmmakers Christopher Petit (Radio On) and Emma Matthews (Arena – Night and Day, BBC), will be released in UK and Irish cinemas on 3 April 2026 by BFI Distribution. A BFI Player release will follow on 11 May.

The film had its world premiere at the IFFR (International Film Festival Rotterdam) in February and its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. This month it won the award for Best Anthropological Film at the 66th Festival dei Popoli – the oldest documentary film festival in Europe – and has screened at other major festivals this year including Austria’s Viennale, Doclisboa, Portugal, the Midnight Sun Film Festival, Finland and the Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea.

D is for Distance is deeply personal and highly moving. Using a montage of contemporary family and travel footage, with archival clips from early cinema history, it dramatically yet poetically illustrates what has happened since Louis Petit, at 12 years old, was suddenly struck with a seemingly incurable and life-threatening rare form of epilepsy, which wiped out his memory of childhood. A rumination on memory and a meditation on cinema, the NHS and family relationships, the film also offers a frank and uncompromising insight into medical bureaucracy and the stigma and ignorance still surrounding epilepsy.

Louis, now 22, is an emerging artist working in London. The experiences of his condition have vividly influenced his paintings, drawings and etchings, exhibited during the LFF at London’s Velrose Gallery and seen throughout the film. Narrated by actor Jodhi May, D is for Distance is also a celebration of music, including Holger Czukay, The Everly Brothers, Ennio Morricone, King Krule and more. Archival footage features the work of pioneering filmmakers the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, Percy Stow and Cecil Hepworth. The film ends high in the Finnish Arctic Circle with breathtaking footage shot by cinematographer Jussi Eerola and a rediscovery of classical cinema.

D is for Distance is a film about: drugs, departure, discord, dialectic, durance, distrust, death, dream, dishonesty, doctors, Dallas, devastation, decline, deception, delight, despair, delirium, dread, desperation, destination, discovery, disorder, danger, delusion, desolation, drawing, divinity, deferral, deviancy, dependence, doorways, diazepam, disability, diagnosis, damage, dragons, doom, damnation, dancing, discharge, devils, desert, disinformation, darkness, detritus, digital, demons, deftness, dog days.

The film’s release reunites Christopher Petit with the BFI; the BFI Production Board supported his first feature, the road movie Radio On (1979), which became a cult classic that has appeared in Sight and Sound’s The Greatest Films of All Time poll and been released by the BFI in cinemas, on DVD, Blu-ray and most recently on BFI Player.

Petit is a filmmaker whose work has received international retrospectives (Locarno, Sundance, Buenos Aires). As well as Radio On, his films include the feature Chinese Boxes (1984) along with The Falconer (with psychogeographer Iain Sinclair) (1997), Asylum (with Iain Sinclair) (2000), London Orbital (with Iain Sinclair) (2002), Unrequited Love (2006) and Content (2010). He is the author of 11 novels, including Robinson and The Psalm Killer, reissued in 2016 as a Picador Modern Classic.

Emma Matthews is co-director with Anthony Wall of Arena – Night and Day (BBC, 2016-20). Her editing work includes many prize-winning arts documentaries whose subjects include James Ellroy, Phil Spector, Bob Marley, Brian Eno, Guy Bourdin, The Sex Pistols, Loretta Lynn, Bob Dylan and Moby Dick. She has cut Christopher Petit’s films since 1998, including his collaborations with Iain Sinclair as well as Unrequited Love (2006) and Content (2010).

D is for Distance is a film by Christopher Petit and Emma Matthews. It is produced by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola at Elokuvayhtiö Testifilmi, a Finnish artist-run production company focusing on cinematic art. The film was supported by the Finnish Film Foundation and AVEK, in co-production with ZDF in collaboration with ARTE – La Lucarne, in association with Yle.