New projects from Screen Stars of Tomorrow, playwrights, TV talent.
UK low-budget filmmaking scheme iFeatures has selected 18 projects (below) for its next development slate.
The scheme, backed by Creative England, BFI Film Fund, BBC Films and Creative Skillset, selected 18 - instead of the usual 16 - feature-length projects from more than 400 submissions.
Three films will be ‘greenlit’ in March 2015 at budgets of £350,000.
The roster of writing and directing talent includes Lynsey Miller, Hope Dickson Leach and Dan Gitsham, all recent Screen Stars of Tomorrow; Rachel De-lahay, winner of 2013 Evening Standard’s Most Promising Playwright; Dominic Leclerc, director of Skins and The Village; Alice Birch, winner of this year’s George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright; Olivia Poulet, star of The Thick Of It; BAFTA Scotland winner Zam Salim; Broadcast Hotshots Abby Ajayi and Alex Kalymnios; and William Oldroyd whose short Best won the 2013 Sundance London Short Film Competition.
Producers include NFTS graduates Jessica Levick and Fodhla Cronin 0’Reilly, Guiding Light Yaw Basoah as well as Jamie D’Cruz, Rebecca Mark-Lawson, Sarah Brocklehurst and Anna Griffin, Rachel Robey and Mike Elliot.
Projects range from a chilling alien horror set in the Yorkshire Dales to a hard-hitting drama about the Birmingham riots; from the blackly comic world of used car salesmen and white collar boxing in Derby to a cross-cultural love story played out amongst the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ and Pakistani communities of Oldham.
Each will undergo creative and commercial development, with support from the partners and other industry professionals.
Christopher Granier-Deferre, iFeatures executive producer, said: “We were blown away by the level of applicants this year and were particularly pleased to see some great television and theatre talent applying for the initiative.”
Christopher Moll, head of film at Creative England and the architect of iFeatures said: “We’ve worked closely with organisations such as Women in Film & TV and the Black Filmmakers Network, amongst others, to increase diversity this year and I’m delighted to see that our overall cohort is now evenly split between men and women.
“The higher numbers of outstanding female, BAME and LGBT talent coming through is reflected in the much greater diversity of stories that we’ve read. That can only be a good thing for industry and audiences alike.”
The selection panel included director Clio Barnard and ex-Focus Films executive Teresa Moneo.
Full list of projects:
| TITLE | GENRE |
LOGLINE | SETTING | TEAM |
| Mud | Drama | Holly is an obsessive 14 year old who finds a substitute for her dysfunctional family in a faded seaside town but what is concealed behind the jolly façade of ice cream, sand castles and penny arcades? | Somerset coast | Director: Jim Morgan Writer: Scout Stuart Producer: Loran Dunn |
| Fen Tigers | Drama | A solitary young man leaves the safety of his home for the fenland wilderness to protect the traveller girl he has fallen in love with. | East Anglian Fenlands | Writer/Director: Rupert Raby Producers: Andrew Start and Yaw Basoah |
| White Collars | Comedy | White Collars is the story of two used-car salesman who bet their entire future on the outcome of an amateur boxing tournament involving an old schoolyard rival. | Derby | Directors: Joe and Adam Horton Writer: Simon Hewitt Producer: Andrew Ryder |
| Apostasy | Drama | Two sisters have been bought up in The Truth. One tries to break free, but when Armageddon is predicted, she must choose who to save. | Oldham, North West | Director: Dan Kokotajlo Writer: Charlotte Wise Producers: Marcie MacLellan and Mike Elliot |
| The Last Tree | Road movie | African spirituality imbues the English landscape when a 28-year old man embarks on a transformative quest to find his birth mother. | Birmingham, Lincolnshire, Manchester, Cumbria | Writer/Director: Shola Amoo Producer: Lee Thomas |
| Keeper | Horror | When two old friends reconnect their renewed friendship is still fragile and is tested to the limit when they become embroiled in a battle to survive what appears to be a deadly virus outbreak in the North Yorkshire Dales. | North Yorkshire Dales | Writer/Director: Dan Gitsham Producer: Sophie Mair |
| Gone From Here | Drama | The relationship between two brothers is pushed to its limit when a young boy from their neighbourhood mysteriously disappears. | Manchester | Writer/Director: Lewis Metcalfe Producer: Lauren Pouchly |
| The Westbridge | Drama | Anything can happen in 24 hours. And for the residents of inner-city Birmingham one hot summer, everything did… | Birmingham | Writer/Director: Rachel Delahay Producer: Jaimie D’Cruz |
| Lady Macbeth | Period Drama | The thrilling and unsettling tragedy of a woman’s struggle for happiness and control in the midst of a watchful and constraining society. | Northumberland | Writer/Director: William Oldroyd Writer: Alice Birch Producer: Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly |
| God’s Own Country | Drama | This year’s lambing season will forever change the lives of dutiful Yorkshire farmer Johnny and migrant worker Gheorghe. | The Pennines | Writer/Director: Francis Lee Producers: Manon Ardisson and Jack Tarling |
| Moon Tan | Drama | Two teenage misfits are determined to escape their small town lives and journey to the northern most tip of Britain to bask in the pure moonlight and get a mythical ‘Moon Tan’. | Essex to Scotland (road movie) | Writer/Director: Karan Kandhari Producers: Anna Griffin and Alastair Clark |
| The Levelling | Drama | The Catto farm in Somerset has miraculously escaped the flooding but is still enveloped in isolation and fear and when 21-year old Charlie Catto kills himself his family starts sinking. | Somerset | Writer/Director: Hope Dickson Leach Producer: Rachel Robey |
| Conception | Drama | Dave and Joe grapple with the reality versus the fairy tale of adoption as they embark on the life-changing process. | Scarborough | Director: Lynsey Miller Writer: Evan Placey Producer: Cecilia Frugiuele |
| Societypath | Thriller | When a distressed housewife loses her husband to suicide it seems his troubled psychotherapist could be the perfect person to blame. | East Sussex | Writer/Director: Camille Griffin Producer: Sarah Brocklehurst |
| The Ugly List | Thriller | Six teenage girls trapped in detention get more than they bargained for when one of their peers reveals a shocking agenda. | Brighton | Director: Alex Kalymnios Writer: Abby Ajayi Producer: Jessica Levick |
| Protect Me From What I Want | Romance | When two lads from different sides of the tracks embark on a dangerous and taboo relationship, their initial sexual desire melts into deep emotional intimacy in this coming of age love story. | Bradford | Writer/Director: Dominic Leclerc Writer: Jonathan Hall Producer: Rebecca Mark-Lawson |
| Izzy and June | Comedy | The brand new “womance” proves that blood is thicker than water as a dysfunctional roadmap to healing half-sisterhood takes a route through blackly comic territory. | The Jurassic Coast | Director: Dan Castella Writers: Montserrat Lombard and Olivia Poulet Producer: Charlotte Walls |
| Nord Ost Kino | Drama | An estranged couple discover an old film machine that can miraculously project memories. | Newcastle | Writer/Director: Zam Salim Producer: Maeve McMahon |
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