Director's Works
Spoken Movement, Family Honour Daniel Gurton
Daniel Gurton is an Australian born, London based writer/director whose work global issues, social structures and injustice. His early career began in photography, studying at the Photography Studies College in Melbourne before working with Ryan McGinley in New York and Nick Knight in London. His 2022 project Les Olympiades, a study of a Parisian housing development, won an ADC Award in New York before moving into filmmaking in 2023.
His latest film Spoken Movement Family Honour has screened globally, winning at Academy and BAFTA recognised festivals including Leeds International Film Festival, Aesthetica Film Festival, Bolton Film Festival, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, etc. It was nominated for Best UK Short at Norwich Film Festival and has qualified for both the BIFA and BAFTA awards.
Daniel is currently in pre-production on Ocean Viking, a documentary about the humanitarian rescue ship operating in the Central Mediterranean, and in development on multiple shorts and a feature.
Set against the stark industrial atmosphere of Tate Modern’s South Tank, Spoken Movement Family Honour follows a British-Ghanaian family caught in a cycle of silence and control. Rooted in the award-winning stage performance by the acclaimed British- Ghanaian dance company Spoken Movement, the film immerses viewers in a world where every gesture carries history, pain, and longing.
When the family’s unspoken wounds rise to the surface, long-buried tensions erupt through choreography that is both brutal and delicate. What begins as a contained domestic story expands into a deeply universal narrative about inherited trauma, cultural expectations, and the internal battles faced by those who suffer behind closed doors.
Collaborating closely with Artistic Director Kwame Asafo-Adjei, filmmaker Daniel Gurton brings a bold cinematic language to the work, blending intimacy with a sculpted, physical visual style. Spoken Movement Family Honour becomes both a film and a reckoning: a confrontation with the expectations placed on women, the damage of patriarchal control,
and the quiet courage it takes to break cycles that have lasted generations.
