#132: Tricia Tuttle, Head of Directing Fiction at NFTS

Best Girl Grip

This week’s guest is Tricia Tuttle, the Head of Directing Fiction at NFTS and former Director of BFI Festivals, where she led on both LFF and Flare.

She announced her departure from the role in October 2022, after 10 years at the BFI as Festivals Director and Deputy Head of Festivals. Prior to that, she held the post of film and skills programme manager at BAFTA and events producer at London’s The Script Factory.

We talk about her early and passionate love of cinema, moving to London from North Carolina, discovering an interest in exhibition and audiences, her time as Director of Festivals at the BFI, instating a creative vision as well as galvanising a team to deliver LFF and Flare year after year, as well as how she designs and delivers a curriculum at NFTS that equips a next generation of directors and offers a broad range of models for creativity and success and how she seeks out new challenges in her career.

Tricia is the kind of guest I created Best Girl Grip to speak to - she’s someone I’ve admired and been inspired by from afar for many years, especially when I started working at the BFI and attending both LFF and Flare with almost crazed commitment. In fact I started going regularly in 2016 so many of my best memories of the festival happened while Tricia was overseeing it, all of which to say this was a special one for me and I hope you enjoy listening.

SHOW NOTES

• LFF Screen Talk with Jane Campion
• LFF Screen Talk with Celine Sciamma
• Find out more about the BFI Flare x BAFTA mentorship programme and apply now for the next edition!
• Find out more about the Direction Fiction MA at NFTS
• Watch the trailer for Anatomy of a Fall, which comes out in cinemas next month
• Listen to previous episodes of Best Girl Grip with guests that Tricia mentions including Sandra Hebron and Cathy Brady