Unauthorised Absence Is on the Big Screen in Los Angeles

Summary

We have some exciting news to share with the SEND Tutoring community…

Unauthorised Absence, the British short film that SEND Tutoring is proud to have supported, is currently screening in Los Angeles as part of its awards journey.

The film is showing at Landmark Theatres Pasadena from Friday 18th September to Thursday 24th September. At just 15 minutes long, Unauthorised Absence tells a powerful story about a reality that will feel all too familiar to many families in the SEND community.

A Story That Needs to Be Seen

Unauthorised Absence follows a single mother fighting to support her neurodivergent daughter. Instead of receiving the understanding and support her family needs, she finds herself fined, threatened and pushed to breaking point by an education system that continually mistakes their distress for defiance.

For many children and young people with SEND, difficulties attending school can be closely connected to school-based anxiety or emotionally based school non-attendance (EBSNA). What may be seen from the outside as refusal, avoidance or poor attendance can be a sign that a child is experiencing significant emotional distress or finding aspects of the school environment increasingly difficult to manage.

For neurodivergent children in particular, there can be many factors beneath the surface: sensory overwhelm, anxiety around transitions or unpredictability, difficulties with social demands, masking, academic pressure, communication differences, unmet needs or the cumulative impact of trying to cope in an environment that does not feel accessible or safe. By the time attendance becomes a visible problem, a child and their family may already have been struggling for quite some time.

This is why the language we use, and the way we respond, matters. Treating distress primarily as an attendance or behavioural problem risks overlooking what the child may be communicating through their difficulty getting into school. Understanding the reasons behind non-attendance creates space for a more compassionate response, focused on reducing barriers and helping the young person feel safe, understood and able to engage with education.

This is what makes Unauthorised Absence so relevant to the work we do at SEND Tutoring. We work with children, young people and families for whom school-based anxiety, EBSNA and unmet SEND needs can have a profound impact on their experience of education. We see how important it is to look beyond attendance or behaviour and understand what a young person may be experiencing, what barriers are getting in the way and what support they need to engage with learning.

Unauthorised Absence brings these experiences to the screen, exploring what can happen when a family seeking understanding and support instead encounters blame and punishment, and when a child’s distress is mistaken for defiance.

Made with the support of an exceptionally talented team, including six BAFTA-winning or nominated filmmakers, the film gives visibility to an issue that is deeply relatable to many of the children, young people and families we support.

Our Part in Helping Make the Film Inclusive

We were delighted to invest in Unauthorised Absence, but we are particularly proud of where our contribution went.

SEND Tutoring’s funding directly supported the on-set chaperone for the child actor at the heart of the film.

The chaperone works closely with the production’s Access Coordinator to help ensure the young actor’s individual SEND needs are understood and met throughout filming. That support helps create an environment in which the child actor can be fully included, feel comfortable and thrive on set.

For us, that reflects something fundamental about inclusion.

People should have the support they need to participate fully, without being held back or disadvantaged because the environment has not been designed with their needs in mind. That principle sits at the heart of SEND Tutoring’s work, and we were incredibly pleased to see it embedded in the way Unauthorised Absence was made as well as in the story it tells.

Follow the Journey

For those of us who cannot make it to LA, there is more to come.

The ambition for Unauthorised Absence has always been for the film to be accessible to anyone who wants to see it, wherever they are. In time, that could include making it freely available online, alongside targeted screenings and collaborations that can help take the film into schools, local authorities and potentially even Parliament.

Before that wider release, however, the team is pursuing film festival opportunities and award recognition. There is an important reason for doing so. The experiences portrayed in Unauthorised Absence are already familiar to many families within the SEND community. The opportunity now is to take that story beyond the people who already understand the realities of EBSNA and school attendance fines. Film festivals and awards can help the story reach journalists, organisations, decision-makers and members of the wider public who may have little or no first-hand experience of these issues. Narrative film has a particular ability to make experiences visible and understood in a way that facts and statistics alone sometimes cannot.

Some film festivals require short films not to have been made publicly available online before entering, which means we will need to wait a little longer before everyone can watch Unauthorised Absence. Giving the film the opportunity to reach new audiences now could ultimately make its wider release even more impactful.

We will be following the journey closely and sharing news with the SEND Tutoring community as it unfolds. When you see updates about the film, please share them too. Every share has the potential to take this story beyond our existing networks and reach someone new.

We are incredibly proud to have supported Unauthorised Absence, and particularly that our contribution helped ensure inclusion was part of how the film was made as well as the story it tells.

LA is an exciting next step, but it is certainly not the last. We cannot wait to see where Unauthorised Absence goes next.

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Ella Jones

If you’re looking for support for a child or young person with special educational needs or a disability, book a free call with us today and find out how we can help.