Shot for around £4,000 over five days in the Bentwaters bomb stores, The Iris Protocol screens at The Riverside in Woodbridge on 22 October, with a Q&A after.
A 19-minute science-fiction short filmed in the Cold War bomb stores at Bentwaters comes to Woodbridge next month, with its director in the room to answer questions afterwards.
The Iris Protocol screens at The Riverside on Thursday 22 October at 19:30, as one of ten films in EAST x EAST, a programme put together by Suffolk Shorts. The whole bill runs 95 minutes and is certificated 12A. Writer and director Joe Love will take part in a Q&A after the screening.
Love grew up in Kesgrave, near Ipswich, went to Kesgrave High School and Suffolk One, and graduated in Film Production from Solent University in July 2026. He says the film won Best Film and Best Producing at the university’s film awards, and that he came away with First Class Honours.
The three EAST x EAST screenings are:
- Saturday 10 October, The Regal, Stowmarket, 19:00. This is the film’s first public screening.
- Thursday 15 October, Abbeygate Cinema, Bury St Edmunds. The cinema’s listing would not load for us; check the time with the box office.
- Thursday 22 October, The Riverside, Woodbridge, 19:30, with the Q&A.
Neither the festival nor the Woodbridge listing publishes a ticket price. The Riverside box office is on 01394 382174 and mail@theriverside.co.uk, open Monday to Saturday 14:00 to 20:00 and Sunday 14:30 to 18:30.
Five days in the bomb stores
The story follows a 17-year-old, Iris, who has spent years underground with her father after an unexplained catastrophe, and who starts to work out that the danger is not where she was told it was. Most of it was shot at Bentwaters, the former RAF and USAF airfield at Rendlesham that now trades as a location site.
Bentwaters Parks describes its bomb stores as grass-covered concrete bunkers “built during the Cold War to securely store nuclear and conventional weapons”, inside high security gates and double fencing, with a guard tower. That is where the bunker in the film is.
“Bentwaters was our dream location from the first day of pre-production, which began in September 2025,” Love said. “We reached out to Sarah at Bentwaters, who handles filming and location bookings, and thankfully we were able to secure the site for five days, Monday to Friday.”
He said the site has hosted much larger productions, most recently Ryan Gosling’s Project Hail Mary, and that the shoot ran long: “We had some very long days, with 6am starts and some nights finishing around 11pm, but the staff at Bentwaters were absolutely brilliant and incredibly accommodating throughout the shoot.”
Two locations carry most of the film. “The main location in the film, the protagonist’s bunker, was filmed inside the onsite bomb stores,” Love said. “We also used one of the former military buildings for the science laboratory sequence.”
Asked what the real place gave a student production that a built set could not, he was blunt about the economics. “As a low-budget student production, Bentwaters gave us something that would have been almost impossible to recreate from scratch. The locations already had the scale, history and atmosphere we needed from the first day of shooting.”
He credited the transformation to production designers Jacob Dodd and Jake Foster and cinematographer Josef Sparrey. “Rather than trying to create a post-apocalyptic environment artificially, we were able to use a real former military site and build our world around what was already there.”
£15,000 was the estimate. They made it for £4,000
The film was paid for by the production team, with no commissioner behind it. Love said the money came from a GoFundMe campaign and a comedy night the team organised, with the profits going to the film.
“During our first meeting with our production supervisor, we were told that the film was ambitious and would require a minimum budget of around £15,000,” he said. “Our main goal was to create a student film that didn’t feel like a student film. After a lot of hard work, fundraising and promoting the project, we were able to complete the film for around £4,000.”
He put much of that down to producer Daniel Misselbrook, “who worked incredibly hard to make the production possible”.
Woodbridge and Ipswich on the call sheet
Around 20 students crewed the film, Love said, with eight cast members on the busiest shooting day and five local extras from Woodbridge and Ipswich. He put that down to six years at Stagecoach Woodbridge: “I was able to use some of the connections I made there to bring local talent into the production. Andy, the headteacher at Stagecoach Woodbridge, was also incredibly supportive of the project and came along to support us during filming.”
The three central roles are played by Karma Meyer as Iris, Toby Pardoe as Michael and Liam McCabe as Adam. Love said Meyer had previously appeared as Anna Koslow in the feature film The Informer, and has also appeared in a film called Isobel.
The trailer
The Riverside’s own programme note for EAST x EAST puts the film alongside nine others and describes it as being about “a young woman who discovers the truth beyond her bunker”. The bill also includes Crossing the Earth, shot in Halesworth and Yoxford with a cast and crew drawn entirely from East Anglia, and From the Dunes, about coastal erosion at Hemsby.
Where the film goes next
The festival run is only starting. “We are hoping to take the film to a number of other festivals, including Prague Film Festival and Sunrise, another Suffolk-based festival,” Love said. “Once the festival run is complete, we plan to release the film online, with the date still to be announced.” Updates go out on the production’s Instagram account, @irisprotocol.
Asked what growing up here put into the film, Love pointed at the map. “Growing up in Suffolk gave me a real appreciation for the local landscape and the different environments around the county. When I discovered that Bentwaters was located right on the edge of Rendlesham Forest, I knew it was the place I wanted to make the film.”
“To make what I consider to be my proudest piece of work just a few minutes from where I grew up was something I never really expected when I first started making films,” he said. “The film is very much connected to Suffolk for me, both through its locations and through the people who helped make it possible.”
What it means for you
- The Woodbridge screening is Thursday 22 October at 19:30 at The Riverside on Quayside, IP12 1BH. Book through the cinema’s listing, or ring the box office on 01394 382174.
- It is a 95-minute programme of ten shorts, not a single feature, and it is rated 12A. The Iris Protocol runs 19 minutes.
- Joe Love’s Q&A follows the films, so this is the screening to pick if you want to hear how it was made.
- If 22 October does not work, the same programme plays The Regal in Stowmarket on Saturday 10 October at 19:00 and Abbeygate Cinema in Bury St Edmunds on Thursday 15 October.
- Coming into Woodbridge for it: The Riverside is on Quayside, and our guide to parking in Woodbridge lists the three car parks that give 30 minutes free. There is more to do nearby in our things to do in Woodbridge guide.
If you are making something in this part of Suffolk, tell us and we will look at it.
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