Ten years ago, Knifedge Creative Director Tom Hadley was asked by the charity Heart n Soul Director, Mark Williams, to work on a number of films documenting, communicating and campaigning around Heart n Soul’s key initiatives. This was to empower artists, regardless of disability, to create art that touches and changes people's lives. Subsequently, it became apparent that a number of Heart n Soul members were interested in writing, directing and acting in their own films - and so a unique collaboration was born between Heart n Soul and Knifedge.

Desmond, was written by Dele (Oyedele Fakoya). A 12 page book portrays the world of Desmond - a 21st Century Robo-man who tries to help when things go wrong. Desmond is Dele’s alter ego, so it made sense that he played himself in the film. His arch nemesis (and ex-wife), Sally X, and her accomplice, Jane, are out to kill him. But can they go through with it?

With Tom Hadley as director, Knifedge's role was to mentor Dele through the process of making his dream, and to make this work within the scope and budget of the project. Dele wanted to make a feature film and was often frustrated by the modest scale and resources of our production. He had to learn a lot about the practicalities of low budget film making and accept the changes we needed to make to the script to make something that would be achievable as a film. We also had to listen too and to accept what was sacrosanct about Dele’s story and understand that things that didn’t necessarily make sense to us were important to Dele’s view of the work. It was a difficult, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding process. The shoot probably rates as two of the happiest days in Dele’s life… That’s what he told us.