A film made entirely by one person, Matthew Simpson, Disremember is unsettling from the start. We don’t know who this man is, or what has happened to him.
He’s Rob, he’s alone, and he opens a birthday card. What’s inside will change his entire life. As we follow him, just one man in a flat, writing, thinking, and regularly enduring blackouts and memory loss, all sorts of storylines become possible.
Simpson has previously directed commercials but this is his first feature film, with shooting taking 20 days and post-production more than a year. For one person to have done all the work on this with no support or budget is extraordinary, but it is no gimmick.
This is a deeply professional piece of work, showing a man descending into paranoia and addiction. The wife, the housemate, the neighbour are all absent but their footsteps and shadows are very much in evidence.
Filmed in Hackney, in the run-down part of the borough, it gives an unsettling aspect to what happens in Disremembered. The pace is slow, but needs to be. We follow Rob as he tries to make sense of his blackouts and what happens within them.
He’s alcoholic, and has carried an ache in his life he’s not been able to control. I did guess at some of the solution to his trauma early on but not the whole story, and the reveal is extremely well done.
I also like the bits in the credit and thanks sequence where Simpson is shown getting to grips with various filming and editing issues, desmystising the whole creative process.
Disremember has brought a unique and accomplished talent to a quirky and unusual film. It keeps you engrossed and guessing (most of the time) as the pieces slowly start to come into focus and gel together.
Disremember has been shown at various film festivals, most recently at London Breeze Film Festival (winner of its Best Feature Fiction award in 2025).