'It’s A Family Thing': Actor-filmmaker Léa Anderson and producer Jeremy Otari give masterclass at LFA

06 March 2026

London Film Academy had the pleasure of welcoming filmmaker and actor Léa Anderson and producer Jeremy Otari for a masterclass on documentary filmmaking with our BA (Hons) Filmmaking and MA Filmmaking students. As we look ahead to International Women’s Day, we’d like to share more about Léa’s film and the personal story behind it.

Three people standing together, smiling

The event, moderated by LFA’s post-production coordinator Iveta Trifonova, centred around Léa's documentary short, It’s A Family Thing, which follows a bi-annual family reunion on her father’s side of the family. The film was part of the Official Selection at the Diversity in Cannes Showcase for 2025, as well as the Women of the Lens Film Festival and the 10th instalment of the Femme Filmmakers Festival. Most recently, it was recognised with a nomination at the Beeston Film Festival, which is set to take place in April.

Transitioning from actor to director

Léa spoke about getting her start in the industry as an actor, and how her appetite for filmmaking grew from there. While acting is something she continues to enjoy, becoming a director and a producer felt like a natural evolution of her interests:

I slowly realised that every time I would be on set, I would ask a lot of questions to the technicians and be friendly with the director, because I was just too curious to understand how it all works. You have way more control [as a filmmaker]. I want to say something, I have a story to tell, and it’s so good to collaborate with a lot of people to create that. For me, it’s magic. And that’s something I didn’t have as an actor.

Léa Anderson

Parents and children playing on a sunny beach

Family reunions

Nearly ten years ago, Léa found the siblings of her father, Antoine Anderson, as well as other relatives in the United States, and reunited them with each other, following decades without contact. Having grown up with a small family in France, Léa was keen to learn more about her roots, and wanted to do so through both a creative and journalistic lens.

It’s A Family Thing was initially conceived as a photojournalistic project, but quickly it developed into a documentary, on the advice of producer and collaborator Jeremy Otari. Léa explains:

I wanted to use art to explore my roots and understand my ancestry. I had the story of my dad, the story of him reconnecting with his roots, his siblings. But we were really keen to tell the story of this family reunion as a tradition in the African American culture and give a little bit of a historical aspect to it.

Léa Anderson

Large group family photo set against woods backdrop

Visual language and structural approach

In shooting and editing the film, Léa and Jeremy wanted to let the family reunions – and the family members – speak for themselves. They adopted a loose approach to filming, ultimately recording hours of interviews with various family members throughout the reunion.

Jeremy outlines the merits of this approach:

We wanted to make something really contemplative, with long shots of them just doing their thing. And we didn’t want to narrate it ourselves; we wanted them to tell their stories. So, we did really long, 60–90-minute interviews, with eight different family members, and that’s all the voices that you hear. We wanted to talk about it [the reunion] without pretending that we knew about it, in a sense.

Jeremy Otari

Léa and Jeremy operated under a constrained timeframe, as the most recent family reunion unfolded at a hotel in Jacksonville, Florida across just four days. They also filmed interviews in groups, in order to capture the different dynamics that differing combinations of interview subjects would bring to the documentary’s overarching narrative.

Two young girls sitting on a bus

Léa and Jeremy went to lengths to ensure transparency throughout the filming process. Having previously met the family at the reunion in 2019, Léa found that the groundwork had been effectively laid for her relatives to be welcoming and forthcoming with their stories.

They returned to London with over 40 hours of footage, which they pared down to the final cut.

Looking back

As Léa reflects on the project, her directorial debut and a love letter to her heritage, she recalls one particular moment with her father, Antoine:

I made this film to kind unconsciously tell him, ‘I love you, we share the same blood, and that’s beautiful.’ When we interviewed him, Jeremy was asking the questions, and I was behind the camera, not talking. And when Jeremy asked... I can’t remember what question, my father suddenly just broke into tears. We had to cut, and he didn't speak for two long minutes. We were all crying. That will stay with me forever. The film enabled me and my dad to reconnect in a beautiful way.

Léa Anderson

'It's a Family Thing' poster

We at LFA would like to thank Léa and Jeremy for being so generous with their time and sharing this mesmerising and deeply personal project with our students. We hope it inspires them to imbue their own films with personal elements, and we wish Léa and Jeremy the best as their exciting careers continue. Also, a special thanks to Iveta for moderating a lively conversation between filmmakers and students.