Ben Gomes

The lives of a handful of millennial artists in London intersect in a series of elliptical vignettes. A painter discusses his recent work with a critic. His girlfriend, a filmmaker, has recently completed her first feature, and guests on a podcast to promote it. She doesn’t know that her former best friend is in town with her husband, leading to an awkward chance encounter. Throughout, discussions about unresolved tensions in art sit alongside unresolved tensions in interpersonal relationships, which at times risk reaching fever pitch.

Collaborative Efforts is a comedy-drama about art, rivalry and the ambiguity of authorship, set over the course of a low key house party in East London. When Ben, whose career is stalling, finds out about his former best friend Dan’s suspiciously familiar new project, he begins to spiral, and when fashionably-late Dan finally arrives, tensions threaten to boil over.