The Nettle Dress | Picturehouse Green Screen Tour

Continue the conversation in the cafe or bar post-screening

The Picturehouse Team

03 Feb 23


Picturehouse Green Screen is an environmental documentary screened in conjunction with a community group, followed by a panel discussion made up of local experts and then (where possible) an invitation to continue the conversation in the cinema's bar or cafe to connect and share ideas.


The Nettle Dress

2022. Director: Dylan Howitt. 68 minutes.

Winner Audience Award Cinecity Film Festival 2022. 


Textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years making a dress by hand just from the fibre of locally foraged stinging nettles. This is 'hedgerow couture', the greenest of slow fashion but also his medicine.

It's how Allan survives the death of his wife that left him and their four children bereft, and how he finds a beautiful way to honour her.

The challenge of making zero carbon clothing sourced within a few miles of his home means re-learning ancient crafts and recalls Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale 'Wild Swans'.

Beautifully filmed by award-winning documentary maker Dylan Howitt, The Nettle Dress follows his whole journey through all the seasons and years. Foraging, spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing the cloth. Finally a healing vision of the dress back in the woods where the nettles were picked, worn by one of his daughters.

'Grasping the Nettle' is at the heart of the film. Making a dress this way becomes devotional, with every thread representing hours of mindful loving craft.

Over seven years Allan is transformed by the process just as the nettles are.  It's a kind of alchemy: transforming nettles into cloth, grief into renewal.

A labour of love in the truest sense, The Nettle Dress is a modern-day fairytale and hymn to the healing power of nature and slow craft. It's one story representing a huge groundswell of people rediscovering the joys of making.

Actor Mark Rylance called the film "Exquisite and inspiring, beautiful and helpful for anyone suffering loss or grief".


"If you've ever wondered what the earth would have fashion do, this is your answer."

⁠—Professor Kate Fletcher, sustainable fashion activist


"Craft transformed by imagination into art, like an alchemical allegory."

⁠—Patrick Harpur, author 


"I was spellbound, what I thought was going to be a step-by-step guide turned out to be so much more."

"Mesmerising, like a meditation in nature, idiosyncratic and beautiful."

"I felt I shared in the joy of the dress coming into being, woven with magic and tragedy."

⁠—Audience Reviews



Wednesday 1 March, 18.30 ⁠— Book Now

The Little in conjunction with Transition Bath is proud to be presenting The Nettle Dress as part of Picturehouse Green Screen.


The panel will include:

Dylan Howitt, director of The Nettle Dress.

Allan Brown, Film Subject and Hedgerow Couture.


Thursday 9 March, 18.30 — Book Now

The Duke of Yorks is proud to be presenting The Nettle Dress as part of Picturehouse Green Screen.


The panel will include:

Dylan Howitt, director of The Nettle Dress.

Allan Brown, Film Subject and Hedgerow Couture.

Mick Carrol, The Brighton Allotment Federation

Tora Bolwill, The Modern Funeral

Dr Zoe Johns, Green City Councillor & Researcher in Human-Centred Design for Fashion & Textiles 





This is a Green screening so all ticket holders are invited to 'Continue the Conversation' following the event in our upstairs seating area cordoned off especially. Free tea/filter coffee for those who bring their keep cups.