Charlotte Cooper Celebrates Bury Your Gays and Love at the Iris Prize Festival
Amidst a fiery festival run of Oscar qualifying nominations and international acclaim, Charlotte Cooper and wife, Leanne touch down in Cardiff to celebrate a nomination with the Iris Prize film festival.
- By Emyr Union (Iris Intern 2025)
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Inspired by the all-too-common tragic deaths of gay and lesbian television lovers, Charlotte Cooper brings us Bury Your Gays an acknowledgement and response to the familiar TV trope. In an earlier interview with DIVA magazine, Charlotte, recognises a 'resurgence' of Hollywood's obsession with 'gay misery', the concept that being gay is to suffer, and the weakened prioritisation of gay rights in the entertainment industry.
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Through Charlotte's commitment to the film production, and sharing this unique message, she and her wife forwent their honeymoon for the sake of the project, showing Leanne to be a true cheerleader to Charlotte's work and vocation.
In recognition of Charlotte's dedication, strength, and perseverance, the Iris Prize Film Festival have gifted her and her wife Leanne a honeymoon suite at The Clayton Hotel Cardiff, where the couple can celebrate the successes that brought them closer together, and the love that propelled Charlotte's vision to the forefront of the festival landscape.
Q: Lovely to have you here guys. How has the lifespan of the film been so far, and how have you seen it grow and change?
Charlotte: Still fairly early in its career but it's been around some festivals in America so that's great. We had our world premiere at Hollyshorts which is an Oscar qualifying festival. Oscar qualifying festivals are great, but Iris is something really special to us and the fact that it's going to be on Channel 4 is amazing too.
Charlotte Cooper (Left, Director) & Charlotte Brownlee (Right, Producer) at the 2025 Iris Prize festival
Q: How has your experience at Iris been so far, and what does this gift mean to you?
Charlotte: We’re so excited to be at Iris, it's an absolute dream come true. Our first anniversary is in December, and we haven't had a proper honeymoon so it's so lovely that Iris is gifting this to us. A real dream come true.
Q: Amazing, and are we looking forward to the Best British party?
Charlotte: Yes, absolutely! Very excited.
Iris 2025 Festival Highlights
Bury Your Gays screened at the Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival on Best British Day. All films in the Best British 2025 shortlist will be available on Channel 4 streaming and broadcast over the next 12 months.
After the end of the Channel 4 window the Best British Short nominated films will be offered a non-exclusive second window on OUTTv‘s global platforms.
