"Dad, it's taken me 36 years to say this, but I love you."

Dad didn't say anything. He was in an urn.

Genre: Live action - Silent film

Status: Available

Last December my father chose to die after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. After collecting his ashes from a crematorium in Zurich I spent a day taking him to all our favourite places in our hometown of Brighton. We had a lovely time (talking as much as we always had when he was alive) until one moment of near disaster when I almost left him on a bus.

This film tells the story of the adventures he might have had if I hadn't realised my mistake just before the bus doors closed.

John MacDonald, Made Better Media

Day Out With Dad is a film in the style of an updated Ealing Comedy. Think Monsieur Hulot's Holiday meets Edgar Wright's Spaced.

After a morbidly humourous opening title sequence showing the factory-line process of a cremation, we meet our protagonist Stanley. He's a hapless but likeable everyman picking up his father's ashes.

Seizing the last chance to bond with his deceased father, Stanley takes the treasured ashes for a whirl on the Gallopers on Brighton seafront... flying a kite together in the park... for a pint in his dad's local... before mistakenly placing the urn on the back of a Deliveroo bike.

A comical chase ensues with the urn rolling down the near-vertical hills of Hanover, almost ending in a catastrophic finale in the back of a rubbish truck. Instead, the film concludes with a last-minute rescue and a tender farewell.

Approaching the grieving process with a unique symbolism, Day Out With Dad takes a light-hearted approach to the universal issue of masculine relationships, bringing new technology to old cinema.