Winning one award for Autism: The Gift in the Curse was mind-blowing. Finding out that the documentary has now won a second, completely different international award feels quite unbelievable.

The film first received a Silver Award for Best Documentary Short at the Latitude Film Awards. It has now won the Globe Award at the July 2026 edition of the ARFF Amsterdam International Film Festival. Seeing the title of our documentary displayed alongside filmmakers from across the world is a surreal moment.

As the subject of the documentary and its Executive Producer, this entire experience has been completely new to me. For more than three years, I have allowed Eklectics Film Company into parts of my life that I would normally keep private. I have spoken openly about experiences that are deeply personal, allowed cameras into difficult moments and tried to explain things that I had spent much of my life not having the words to explain.

That openness has not been easy. At times, the process has been emotionally demanding and trying because this is not a story I can step away from once filming stops. It is my actual life. These are experiences that affected my childhood, my mental health and the way I learned to survive in a society that does not understand me.

Receiving my diagnosis at 41 brought answers, but it did not suddenly make life easier. Trying to unmask after decades of surviving in the only way I knew how has brought its own new struggles. Being more open about being autistic has also created new challenges from a society that questions or disbelieves you when you do not match its expectations. After spending so many years misunderstood, having people doubt you once you finally understand yourself adds insult to injury. That has become a battle in itself, one I never had before my diagnosis.

The documentary also looks at the impact that masking, burnout and years of being treated through the wrong lens can have on an autistic person’s mental health. These are not abstract subjects for me. They are experiences I have lived through, and they continue to affect my everyday life.

Art has become the way I process my emotions and understand myself more clearly. It also gives me somewhere to scream when the words I am saying continue to fall on deaf ears. Art has become a language that allows me to connect with other neurodivergent people, while also helping to bridge the gap with those in society who still do not understand our experiences.

The film also explores the wider reality of being autistic alongside other co-occurring difficulties, and how seriously that combination can affect the lives of neurodivergent people. It also shows the support I give to different charities and causes, because for me this has never just been about telling my own story. It is about using what I have lived through to raise awareness, support others and challenge the parts of society that continue to overlook the reality of our lives.

That is part of what makes these two awards so significant to me. Although they both recognise the same film, they recognise it from different perspectives.

The Silver Award at the Latitude Film Awards recognised Autism: The Gift in the Curse within the documentary short category. It acknowledged the quality of the filmmaking and how more than three years of footage, lived experience and creative input were shaped into a powerful short documentary.

The Globe Award at ARFF Amsterdam feels different again. The award recognises a film speaking to an issue with wider global importance. Autism, late diagnosis, mental health, masking and the failure of systems to understand people properly are not issues limited to one city or one country. Autistic people across the world are still being missed, misdiagnosed and expected to survive within environments that were never designed with us in mind.

For a film based on such a personal part of my life to be recognised in that way is incredibly powerful. It tells me that although this documentary begins with my experiences, the issues within it reach far beyond me.

Over the three years, Jon and Robin from Eklectics have taken a huge amount of deeply personal footage and shaped it into this short documentary. As both the subject and Executive Producer, I have been closely involved throughout, helping to guide the areas we explored and the way the story developed, while they brought their filmmaking experience to capturing and bringing it all together. The finished film is something we have all put a great deal into, and seeing it recognised through two very different awards is something I am incredibly proud of, and I know they are too – they are extremely good at what they do.

This documentary was created from the ground up and developed organically over more than three years. My original meeting with Eklectics happened naturally, and the film grew in the same way, without a fixed agenda or a version of the story already decided. It was filmed in real time as I tried to understand how autism has shaped my life, while also discovering what I could do through my art and the direction it was beginning to take me in.

What you see is not a story built afterwards to fit a particular message. It is a genuine record of me navigating a late diagnosis as it was happening, with all the uncertainty, challenges and change that came with it. The film did not begin with a conclusion. It followed me as I fought to understand myself and turn that understanding into something that could make a difference.