“Lollipop”: Daisy-May Hudson’s Gritty Feature Debut Chronicles a Mother’s Fight for Reunification After Prison

May 9, 2025: Award-winning documentary filmmaker and BAFTA Breakthrough talent Daisy-May Hudson makes her narrative feature debut with Lollipop, a raw and moving exploration of motherhood, survival, and the broken systems surrounding reintegration after incarceration. Backed by BBC Film and the British Film Institute (with National Lottery funding), the film is set in East London and will hit UK cinemas on June 13.

The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively premiered the trailer, offering a first glimpse at Posy Sterling (The Outrun, Playing Nice) in the lead role as Molly, a young mother freshly released from prison after a four-month sentence. What should be a hopeful return quickly unravels into frustration and despair as she attempts to regain custody of her children from foster care. But there’s a cruel twist — she can’t secure housing without her children, and she can’t get her children back without housing.

Caught in this vicious bureaucratic cycle, Molly reconnects with her childhood friend Amina, played by Idil Ahmed, also a single mother. Together, they forge a bond and decide to take control of their futures in a system designed to keep them stuck.

TerriAnn Cousins (Top Boy, Silver Haze) also features in the film, which had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The casting was led by acclaimed director Lucy Pardee, known for her work on Aftersun and Bird.

Lollipop is produced by Olivier Kaempfer and Cecilia Frugiuele under the Parkville Pictures banner. The project marks Hudson’s transition from documentary to fiction following her acclaimed film Half Way, which chronicled her own family’s experience with homelessness.

Promising to be an unflinching yet empathetic portrait of modern motherhood under pressure, Lollipop highlights the resilience of women navigating an unforgiving social system.