Founded by Nottingham Television Workshop alumni Tim Bryn Smith, The Nottingham Actor’s Workshop has for fifteen years been an acting training ground for local people, whether their ambitions are professional, personal or somewhere in-between. In 2026, they’ve got a new project on the way – Surrender To It – a full length feature film, blending comedy, adventure, surrealism, and drama, written and directed by Tim himself, and set for release on global streaming platforms. Tim tells us more…
Tim Bryn Smith – who back in 2010 founded The Nottingham Actor’s Workshop – had a surreal experience while shooting Surrender To It: a feature film starring members of the Workshop, which he also wrote and directed. He’d brought the cast and crew to an atmospheric spot that would be their set – a remote hostel in rural Wales. Nearby was a tall green hill with a communications tower at the top, which he’d scouted some months prior.
“I got up super early, and thought, ‘I’ll run to the top of that hill,’ because the last time I’d been there it was a different time of year, so the vegetation might have changed,” says Tim. “I ran up to the tower and walked in, like the characters do in the film. I looked in the middle, and there was a sheep skull – ready to go. I was like, ‘This is insane.’ That was the culmination of many synchronistic events – the skull which freaked me out, freaks them out in the film.”
For Tim, Surrender To It came from lots of serendipitous occurrences – events naturally unfolding from his many years of leading the Workshop, and training Notts people for the film industry. The idea for the film started gestating after the Workshop completed two projects: Tawn 19, a film both shot and set in the pandemic, and Echoes of the Fallen: a short film demonstrating weapons training which is part of the Workshop’s intensive ‘screen school’.
On a film shoot, where people are working really hard – unless they trust you, there’s no guarantee they’ll get the thing back they’re working for
A film shot on site and written by Tim, however, would allow Workshop members to be ‘all rounders’ – honing the many skills required to shoot a full-length feature film. Incidentally that’s been one of Tim’s aims since founding the Workshop fifteen years ago, as an adults’ alternative to the young-people-focused Nottingham Television Workshop.
“One of the big things that I try to promote in the Actor’s Workshop is a holistic approach to creativity,” he says. “As an actor who diversified into editing, producing, writing, and directing, I believe that’s a really good way to approach acting – it gives you a better sense of the industry. It gives you a fresh perspective that you know it’s a team – one of the tenets of the actor’s workshop is making your scene partner look good.”
So, what’s Surrender To It about? In short – it’s a film with a meta quality, in which six friends who know each other from a fictionalized ‘actors workshop’ meet in the Welsh countryside. One of them, Dani, recently endured a pretty awful personal tragedy.
Parts of that story emerged from Tim’s experience as a Television Workshop alumni – like the characters in the movie, he periodically reunites with his compatriots from back then, some of whom found stardom, like Vicky McClure and Joe Dempsie.
Like any independent film made with love and care, however, there are lots of layers to the story, and some fun plot twists as well. Each character arrives in Wales with a unique background, and some personal baggage that they’re trying their best to shed. Often, Tim would write these characters with members of the Workshop in mind.
“Part of the requirement to be involved was that none of the cast had featured in a main role in a feature film,” says Tim. “They’d all done one of our screen school courses, and through that process of me working with them, I was able to see their development as screen actors – their confidence, and ability. I was able to write the roles leaning into their strengths from what I’d seen during the training process. It was a really lovely, wholesome, organic, growth-led process to get there.”
Surrender To It is also a film that, throughout, looks like it was very fun to make. It’s got a bit of everything – drama, comedy, emotion, and surrealism – with some great representations of the camaraderie that will often exist between old friends.
For Tim, the effort that everybody put into making the film was a big part of making an immensely fun end product – “Normally I wouldn’t expect anyone to do a job that they’re not being paid to do, or is on their credit,” he says, adding, “but all the actors mucked in to do literally everything. Some days we filmed from the crack of dawn way into the night. But again no one ever complained. It was the hardest set to be on, work-wise, but the best set.”
Considering that the shooting schedule was about as DIY as you can get, there are some moments of proper movie magic in Surrender To It, where everything from the acting, to the music, to the cinematography just ‘clicks’ together. Watching it, you do feel a bit of pride that the folks onscreen are Notts locals who, before joining the Workshop, were generally at square one in terms of acting.
That feeling peaks during an emotional sequence towards the end of the movie, much of which was filmed underwater. For Tim, that scene was one of the highlights of his directorial career – it involved a triple-location shooting schedule between Ollerton, a swimming pool in Notts, and an immensely cold lake in the Welsh countryside, plus co-ordinating many different people doing some physically demanding kinds of filmmaking.
“On a film shoot, where people are working really hard – unless they trust you, there’s no guarantee they’ll get the thing back they’re working for,” he says. “It’s a trust economy – it’s a sacrifice now for the long term gain. So there’s a huge amount of onus on that. But it only takes one bad thing to happen on set to completely derail us.”
Back in November, Surrender To It premiered at the Savoy Cinema, but unfortunately it’s not yet available for public viewing. As is often the case with films produced on a shoestring budget, getting it distributed is a lengthy process. However, it’s still set for a 2026 release, and will also be available on streaming platforms worldwide, which is pretty exciting for a movie homegrown with local Notts talent. It’s therefore definitely worth watching when it comes out – nowadays filmmaking is pretty consolidated into a small bunch of companies, and chances for us to uplift local talent, to do great things, are few and far between.
“Our marketing budget will be an atom in the ocean compared to a Marvel movie that has every single bus stop and eyes on it on every device going,” says Tim. “So what people will ideally do is give it good IMDB reviews, and also tell others to watch it, to support grassroots filmmaking. That will help us get onto the next one, as this is really about leveraging this against the next film we do that helps local people take steps into the industry.”
Surrender To It will be released on global streaming platforms in 2026. You can check out the trailer on YouTube now.
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