EXCLUSIVE: Poster reveal for ‘Requirements’, Caroline Hajny’s Iris Prize-nominated sci-fi film
26 Aug 2026 | By Natalia Albin
Requirements is a sci-fi speculative short following Elena, an immigrant applying for citizenship after ten years living in the country. As the government expands its reach, a new technology is introduced to extract applicants’ thoughts and verify that their values align with the state’s. Elena is left to choose between the life she’s built with her girlfriend or returning to the country she fled.
Director Caroline Hajny (Diary of a Ghost) said the project pulled her toward a genre she hadn’t worked in before. “When we started working on this film, it felt somewhat futuristic, whereas on the weekend of our shoot, the Tommy Robinson protests were taking place in London and suddenly we found ourselves asking whether this film was so futuristic after all,” she tells Short Stuff.
Writer Alexandra Tsarkova, who also stars in the film as Elena, drew the story from her own experience applying for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. “The whole storyline just materialised in my head out of a Freudian slip. Instead of saying ‘biometric appointment’, I said ‘biopsy appointment’,” she says, “and joking that if the government could read your thoughts, they totally would, and that I would agree to it, since I wanted my citizenship that much.” The rest of the film, she added, is inspired by real experiences she’s had or heard from other migrants in the UK. “It very quickly morphed into a devastating mirror of our society.”
The importance of the story didn’t go unnoticed by Afsaneh Dehrouyeh (Yellow, The Phantom of the Open), as she mentions how “normally if I was sent this script I’d be getting offered the role of an asylum seeker, to the point where it took me a moment to actually realise that I was being offered the immigration lawyer.” So she felt compelled to explore the dichotomy of that, “I felt there was an extra layer the lawyer could bring to the story which may not be expected. [Alexandra] was so open to exploring my instincts and [Caroline] was very much on the same page.”
Equally for Mia Rodgers (The Sex Lives of College Girls), who also starred in Hajny’s Diary of a Ghost, the script’s reality felt important. “Although dystopian, the world Alexandra created felt uncomfortably close to our own reality, and given the current climate we're living in, I found the story particularly significant,” she tells us.
Ian Conningham (Lady Macbeth, Doctor Who), who plays the doctor in the short, said he was drawn to the script initially because it’s such an important global subject. He added that he was also excited to work with Hajny: “Looking at Caroline's work and the rich, tasteful and exciting aesthetic that runs throughout everything she does really sealed the deal.”
Short Stuff has an exclusive first look at the poster ahead of the film’s next festival stop. Requirements has already won Best Sci-Fi at Sunrise Film Festival and is screening at Women X Film Festival. It’s nominated for Best British Short at Iris Prize, a nomination that comes with a Film4 broadcast and a Channel4 streaming release.
Poster design by Natalia Albin
