Number 9’s Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley on ‘The Salt Path’, ‘The Assessment’ and future projects

UK producer pair Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley of Number 9 Films have launched two features – The Salt Path and The Assessment – at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year. 

Marianne Elliott’s The Salt Path stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs as a real-life couple who trekked the UK’s 630-mile, shoreline-hugging South West Coast Path from Dorset to Somerset after losing their house and receiving life-threatening medical news.

In Fleur Fortuné’s UK-US-Germany co-production The Assessment, Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen go head-to-head as the former assesses the latter’s eligibility to bear a child in a world ravaged by climate change and low on resources.

Both screen at TIFF as Special Presentations. “The only thing that connects them is they’re both from first-time filmmakers,” says Woolley.

There is also the female-driven element of both titles, not uncommon in Number 9’s roster, joining the likes of Carol, Made In Dagenham and Colette. “It’s not a brand but it is something we always get drawn to,” says Woolley, who co-founded Number 9 in 2002 with producing partner and wife Karlsen, having honed their working relationship at Woolley’s previous companies Palace Pictures and Scala Pictures.

Personal approach

It was Elliott, best known for her Olivier Award-winning theatre work, who brought Raynor Winn’s memoir The Salt Path to the attention of Number 9.

“We had wanted to work with Marianne for a few years but she’d struggled to find the right material,” says Karlsen, who soon discovered US producer Lloyd Levin already had the rights to the book.

Levin, partner at Shadowplay Features, whose credits include The Mauritanian, got in touch with the pair asking if they wanted to collaborate on the project.

“We moved forward with an equal partnership,” says Karlsen.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz was brought on to write the screenplay, while financing came from BBC Film and Lipsync. “It was quite seamless in the way it all came together.”

The film rights to Winn’s memoir were handled by Jennifer Christie, a literary agent at London-based Graham Maw Christie Agency, in collaboration with co-agent Meg Davis of the Ki Agency.

“We had over 50 approaches, but it was [Levin’s] personal connection with Raynor Winn’s story and his humanity and integrity that won us over,” says Christie. “We felt we could trust him, and that has played out. It’s been amazing that he and the production team involved Raynor and Moth in the whole production process making it more inclusive than usual.”

Winn chose not to write the screenplay adaptation. “The preferred role of the author in collaboration with the adaptation team differs from author to author. We find that some artists have no interest in writing their work as a screenplay, and others do. It’s a personal preference,” explains Karlsen.

Production took place in the summer of 2023, with the team keen to film in as many of the real-life locations as possible including Minehead in Somerset, and Newquay and Rame in Cornwall.

“We really did travel the Salt Path,” says Karlsen with a laugh, praising French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, who also worked on Alice Rohwacher’s La Chimera, for capturing the “magic” of the English countryside.

For the cast and crew, it was a physically challenging shoot that often involved trekking to remote locations, some of which proved unusable for filming. “As a producer, you always have to remember that tough access does not necessarily translate to something extraordinary on screen,” says Karlsen.

The themes of The Salt Path feel particularly resonant in a country where the cost-of-living crisis is still very much in the spotlight. “It is a crazy thing for this couple to do but they were desperate, there was no other choice for them,” says Karlsen.

“It’s about a woman disappearing physically and economically,” she adds, referring to the film’s subtle nods towards Anderson’s character going through menopause.

The producers say they have no plans to screen The Salt Path at any other festivals following TIFF, ahead of its UK and Ireland release via Black Bear next April.

“[BFI London Film Festival] just felt way too early to launch it,” says Karlsen, who suggests an awards campaign is not entirely off the cards for 2026.

Rocket Science is handling international sales. 

Future fantastic

Ambitions may be bigger for The Assessment, which Woolley reveals is expected to play further festivals after TIFF.

The film scored one of the biggest deals at the festival with Prime Video taking all rights excluding Germany, where Capelight Pictures is releasing. WME Independent represented international rights on behalf of the filmmakers. UTA Independent Film Group handled North American rights. 

This film’s journey began quite differently too, with Woolley discovering the screenplay while judging a new-writers competition nearly a decade ago.

“It was written by a couple from Hastings [on England’s south coast] and the script said, ‘Mrs and Mr Thomas’ on it, which was immediately intriguing,” he notes.

“The writing was clever, and the concept was really good; it just didn’t feel like it was quite there yet.”

The producers began working closely with the couple – Nell Garfath Cox and Dave Thomas – to develop the script, eventually bringing on a third writer in playwright John Donnelly.

More accustomed to dramas set in the past, Woolley notes the “much more difficult” process of making a futuristic feature.

“When you’re dealing with a future world, there’s 1,000 different variations of everything and you’re constantly second-guessing. We ended with a very stripped-down version of the future.”

“But not so futuristic that it doesn’t feel as though it has any tentacles in this world,” adds Karlsen. “Control over women’s bodies has become central stage in this year’s American election, after all.”

France’s Fortuné came on board after Woolley and Karlsen watched her “extraordinary” short films and commercials, including several Armani campaigns with Cate Blanchett.

Germany’s augenschein filmproduktion co-produces with filming taking place largely in Cologne’s MMC Studios plus some location work in Tenerife. The film received an additional $1.1m (€1m) from Cologne regional film fund Filmstiftung NRW, with backing from US financiers ShivHans, Tiki Tane and Project Infinity.

“We’d never done something as pure as this in terms of a German co-production and a Spanish co-production,” Woolley explains. “All our financiers were American so that was also a new thing for us. 

And beyond…

Aside from the double Toronto launch, the duo is in the midst of filming a feature adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel A Pale View Of Hills, set in Japan and the UK. The project reunites Number 9 with Ishiguro, who penned the screenplay adaptation of Oliver Hermanus’s Oscar- and Bafta-nominated film Living. Ishiguro serves as executive producer this time around.

Kei Ishikawa adapts and directs the mystery drama surrounding a Japanese widow bearing secrets, as the story moves between post-war Nagasaki in 1950s Japan and the end of the Cold War in 1980s England.

“On Ishiguro’s suggestion, we’ve incorporated Greenham [Common] into the story,” Karlsen reveals, the former Royal Air Force base in Berkshire, UK that housed nuclear weapons in the 1980s. The base was made famous when it became the site of a women’s peace protest camp. “There are so many things being explored in the film which feel extremely relevant to today.”

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Bunbuku is producing A Pale View Of Hills alongside Number 9, while Japan’s streaming service U-Next financed the film with Gaga distributing in the territory. “We would love to make more films with Japanese partners, that would be wonderful,” says Woolley. “We’ve always had close connections in Japan.”

The producers are “looking at a couple of features” for production next year and have a further half-dozen in development.

There is also the company’s newly opened TV arm, headed up by former Paramount executive Kate Laffey, which is working on a similar output model. 

“We are a very lean company and we have always worked that way,” says Woolley. “There’s an organic way of making cinema that we adhere to, where we’re very sensitive to other filmmakers and writers and actors with whom we’d love to work. Anything that grows from us grows organically.”

Additional reporting by Isabella Cooper-Brown

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