From crisis & confusion to radical clarity
Hi! Thanks for joining me on honest tour through my month just gone, as I embark on my next chapter after years spent making my debut feature documentary, whilst also navigating perimenopause (me) and autism (my son). Expect headaches, hang-ups and a whole lot of heart. If you enjoy my writing, do feel free to leave a comment. And of course I’d love it if you’d consider subscribing to get all my posts delivered straight to your inbox or the Substack app 😊
In the spirit of not burying the lede, let me cut straight to the main takeaway of today’s post:
I’ve decided to move The Film Thread to a free model, with no paywalls going forward and my previously paywalled essays gradually made available for everyone to read.
I’ll send out a separate email in a couple of days with all the practical details of what season 2 is going to look like now - and how you can still support me if you’d like to - but in the meantime, if you want to hear the unvarnished story of how and why I came to this decision, then read on. Plus, as always I’ve included some of my top work wins for the month. And stay tuned right to the end for a quick Chernobyl-related announcement.
Hi friends,
As I write, I’m looking out my window at the city below, blanketed in a dense, white mist. Yes, you might accuse the weather gods of being a bit obvious, but still, I can’t help but see it as a metaphor for how the last month has felt: a heavy, foggy layer that was becoming harder and harder to trudge my way through.
I’ll expand on what I mean by that in a moment, but before you worry about me, I’m out the other side now. Just as being up here atop the steep hill we’re lucky enough to live on affords me a spacious view across and above the mist, I’ve managed to find some-much needed perspective on the weight (much of it self-inflicted) I could feel building up and bearing down on me these past few weeks. And I’ve made a big decision that in a stroke has lightened the load.
Let me explain.
As you’ll likely know, at the end of January, we reached the end of the first season in what became my overarching creative project of 2025 - my lovingly-conceived and executed online film club, The Film Thread. And three weeks ago I announced our all-new second season for 2026, looking at autism on film. I was supposed to be announcing the first film in the season last week.
But I didn’t.
So what happened? Well, there’s both a professional and a personal answer to that, though in reality those two things can’t really be disentangled, at least not for me in this moment of life.
As I wrote about in my last post [https://vickilesley.substack.com/p/this-one-begins-at-home], the reason I chose autism as the topic for the new season of the film club is precisely because it’s something we’re living with in my own family - my son is diagnosed and as our daughter is getting older, it’s something we’ve begun to think and talk about in relation to her too (though hers is definitely not the same journey as his).
Both of them are navigating very real challenges and they need me to be not just physically present but fully emotionally and mentally available. Sometimes the challenges spill out beyond the non-school hours when parenting them is my main job into the time I’ve allocated for working. That happened just this week - albeit a little more dramatically than usual:
What that means is that I have to be pragmatic and realistic about how much work I try to cram into those allotted work hours. But if you’ve been here a while, you might have got the sense that I’m not naturally a streamlined, bish-bash-bosh kinda gal. I mean, I’m someone who took 10 years to make one film! There’s a reason the original title for this publication was Meandering over the Pebbles, not Swiftly Channelled Down the Nearest Outlet Pipe...
I love learning and burrowing down research rabbit holes to ferret out the most fascinating information to share. This - I hope - results in work that earns its right to your attention. But it also takes me a loooooong time!
I also have a tendency to run away with myself in coming up with all kinds of cool ideas that I get super excited about - but massively underestimate what will be involved in actually bringing them into being.
And honestly, that’s what’s happened with The Film Thread.
TRUTH BOMB TIME!
Yep, this is the moment where I ‘fess up about the realisation that hit me over the past couple of weeks, as I felt that dead weight of a promise growing harder and harder to fulfil...
If you were here for the first season, you’ll know that on top of the work that went into curating the full programme of 6 feature films plus companion shorts, each month I was researching and writing a long (4000+ word) in-depth primer essay as well as hosting a live Zoom call with a different special guest invited to each one.
This was a LOT of work, but it was made relatively easier by the fact that I’d spent a decade and more immersed in the world of atomic issues. The same is not true for the world of autism and as my preparation went on through February, it became clearer and clearer that I’d bitten off much more than I could chew.
At first I just thought I needed to delay my planned launch. But as I looked at the months ahead and tried to actually imagine fitting in all the work I’d set myself for the film club AND making progress with the other major pieces of work that are my focus for the year AND being there for my kids.... well, I just couldn’t.
I’d hit a wall and felt paralysed to press on, but also embarrassed to admit it, especially having already hit the go button on launching season 2. So I paused. I journaled. I talked to my partner. And I had an incredibly clarifying conversation with the wonderful Laura Oldfield [https://substack.com/profile/19373495-laura-oldfield] who I’m currently working with inside her Kindling Academy.
I knew things had to change.
We talked through my ideas for how to create an experience that would still be really rich for people to engage in but would be more manageable for me to produce. And when she gently raised the possibility that perhaps I could think about dropping the paywalls completely, I felt, first, a frisson of shock at even countenancing it… and then an almost immediate sense of liberation and relief.
I think a big part of that feeling was that, as a filmmaker, I’ve always wanted my work to reach as wide an audience as possible, so having some of my best writing - work I’m really proud of - locked behind a paywall where only a few people see it has, if I’m honest, always left me feeling a little conflicted.
Time to knock down some bricks...?
Laura helped me see that I am the boss of me. And I can decide how it all works. So I’ve decided. Strap in and get ready for The Film Thread 2.0.
I’ve got a programme of films mapped out that I truly think will make for a great journey of discovery over the coming months - fun, moving, thought-provoking, horizon-expanding movies that have as much to teach us about the world we’re living in right now, as about the world in which they were made. But the format will be lighter. And I will be launching in April - which is Autism Acceptance Month, so that feels like just the right moment.
Throwing everything up in the air feels scary, even though I know it’s the right thing to do. If you’d like to buy me a steadying coffee while I navigate these choppier-than-usual waters, you can do that here:
Or you can still sign up as a paid subscriber - now for half the original price.
Of course, I know I’m not the first person who’s taken on more than they can deliver, or made promises they’ve realised they simply can’t follow through on. And I certainly won’t be the last. But if any of this has struck a chord with you, or echoed some of your own experiences, maybe reading about me muddling my way through to a resolution might make you feel a bit less crappy about your own travails.
And that would be a win for me. Talking of which...
WORK WINS THIS MONTH
Despite my mini existential crisis (!) I’m happy to say February was not a total bust workwise. Here are a couple of highlights to mention:
1. Created & published my Bonus Atomic Films Guide
There’s not too much more to say about this one other than that it was a pleasure to compile and I had some very nice messages in response to it. I’d planned to put it behind the paywall but obviously now I’m pulling the paywall down, I won’t be doing that. I will likely make it a paid-for resource in some other way though, so if you didn’t download it already, now would be a great moment to do so:
2. Revamped my Substack homepage
This has been on my mental to do list for a while, so I’m really pleased to have got on and sorted it. I previously had the page organised under topic headings - Atomic Stuff & Documentary Stuff - which made sense to me and anyone who already knew me and my feature doc The Atom: A Love Affair. But I always thought they might seem a bit out of left field to someone coming across my world for the first time. And that’s before we even got into my Meanders! Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.
So I’ve done away with the old headings and come up instead with something I hope is sleeker, clearer and more inviting - and will work to hold whatever new topics or areas I might decide to tackle in the future. These are:
DISPATCHES [https://vickilesley.substack.com/s/dispatches]
A monthly letter (or sometimes video) sharing behind the scenes of my personal & professional life. The place to find my honest reflections - as a documentary maker, mum & human - on creative work, midlife reinvention, neurodivergent parenting & the messy, interesting business of fitting it all together.
CONVERSATIONS [https://vickilesley.substack.com/s/conversations]
A documentary filmmaker in conversation - on the page or on the screen - uncovering the stories, perspectives & insights of people doing fascinating work in their different corners of culture, science & society. Mostly linked to areas I’m exploring in my own creative endeavours.
CURATOR’S NOTES [https://vickilesley.substack.com/s/curators-notes]
Ad-hoc written & video posts on cultural picks I think are worth your attention. A mixture of recommendations of good things to read, watch or listen to and lengthier reviews & analysis, typically of films or books related to my documentary preoccupations.
Plus THE FILM THREAD [https://vickilesley.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-film-thread] still has its own page (which I need to rewrite now I’m changing how it all works!) which you can click through to from the top as well.
And I’ve added an extra section, PORTRAITS [https://vickilesley.substack.com/t/portraits], tucked away at the bottom of the homepage for now, but which may get promoted to the prime real estate at the top in the future.
In setting this all out so nicely, I’ve been indebted to my Substack guru Claire Venus ✨ [https://substack.com/profile/8406699-claire-venus] and her course Your Beautiful Digital (Substack) Magazine, which really helped me figure out not just the underlying thinking about what I want to communicate to the world about my work via my Substack home, but also the practical nuts and bolts of getting it all done.
If you’re writing on Substack and really want to go deep into all the possibilities of how you can use the space as a home for your creative work/want to give your own homepage a makeover like I did, I can highly recommend the course (this is an affiliate link so if you do decide to purchase I’ll get something too - win win!)
Or if you’re curious and thinking about dipping a toe into writing yourself, this bundle of quick tutorials for just 11 quid will get you on your way quickly and easily - Claire’s a lovely teacher 😊
3. Completed my 30 Days of Short Films About Autism
I had such a great time doing this. Across the 30 days, on Substack Notes & BlueSky, I posted films from Europe, North America & Asia/Pacific, right through from the 1970s to the present day and spanning the genres from documentary, drama & comedy to animation, poetry & even a virtual reality short.
I feel like I ended up with a genuinely fascinating collection that, brought all together, paints a complex, nuanced portrait both of autistic experience and of changing social understanding across the decades. So I’m going to compile it all into a lovely PDF resource for you, along similar lines to the bonus atomic films guide. Watch this space for that coming soon.
BEFORE I GO
Finally, I’ll talk much more about this and other Chernobyl-related things in my next monthly update, but a quick heads up and reminder now that April 2026 will mark 40 years since the world’s worst ever nuclear accident and there will, unsurprisingly, be many events taking place to commemorate the anniversary.
One such event is taking place at the Othona Community in Essex (where I screened The Atom last year [https://vickilesley.substack.com/p/monthly-meander-sept-25-ahead-by]) with two friends of this parish - artist Angenita Teekens (you can read her The Atom & Us interview here [https://vickilesley.substack.com/p/the-atom-and-us-angenita-teekens]) and writer Philippa Holloway, who some of you will remember from the In-Conversation event I hosted with her back in 2023 discussing her novel The Half-life of Snails [https://www.parthianbooks.com/products/the-half-life-of-snails-paperback]. Here’s the flyer:
If you have any Chernobyl-related events you’d like me to spread the word about just reply to this email or drop me a comment and I’ll make sure to include the details in next month’s missive and on social media.
And for those of you who’ve made it all the way to the end of what turned out to be a long and more than usually soul-baring update, THANK YOU.
I’d love to know if anything resonated.
Till the next time then,
Stay curious,
Vicki x
Watch my film on Netflix [https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81409029] & Disney+ [https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/movies/atom-the-a-love-affair/4TqtevLnIZSe] (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand [https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theatomaloveaffair] - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE [http://theatomfilm.com/store]
Find me on Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/vickilesley.bsky.social] & at LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicki-lesley-79034b5/]
Get full access to Vicki Lesley is... Documental at vickilesley.substack.com/subscribe [https://vickilesley.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
