UK producers Helen Simmons and Loran Dunn arrived at Luna Carmoon’s debut feature Hoard from different directions.
Simmons had first met Carmoon when the duo were on the Network@LFF talent development programme as part of BFI London Film Festival in 2018, with the pair becoming friends prior to working together.
Dunn, on the other hand, has known Carmoon “for her whole film career”, meeting her before she’d made any film work and subsequently producing her shorts Nosebleed (2018) and Shagbands (2020).
Dunn and Simmons had collaborated on advocacy group Producers Roundtable throughout 2019; moving their partnership to making a film felt natural. “We’re aligned on so many things,” says Dunn. “All the way through the process, Helen and I had the exact same notes. It makes it so easy when you feel like you’re really in tune with somebody.” Together they have produced Hoard with Andy Starke of Anti-Worlds, who was executive producer on Neil Maskell’s Klokkenluider, also produced by Simmons.
Debuting today (September 2) in Critics’ Week at the Venice film festival, Hoard follows Maria, a young girl living with her hoarder mother in a squalid 1980s south London home; then picks up the story with Maria a foster child in her late teens, when Michael, a young man with a similar past enters her life. Carmoon came up with the idea in early 2020 shortly prior to the pandemic, with backers on the project including BBC Film. The funder’s openness to Carmoon’s unconventional script aided development, say the producers.
“It was a conversation we had early on – the way that Luna develops things is quite unusual,” says Dunn. “The screenplay was more like a piece of poetry or a novel. BBC Film were on board with that; they didn’t protract that process any longer [than required].”
The BFI Film Fund also provided backing for the film.
Hoard shot for five weeks in spring 2022, “in that post-Covid rush, which people have forgotten now – it’s quiet again because of the strikes – but there was that period where everything was going again and it was really hard to find crew and kit,” says Simmons.
Without disclosing the exact figure, the producer says the budget was “not big… we did a lot with very little.”
“It’s getting more expensive to shoot anything,” adds Dunn. “It was a decent amount for a debut, but it’s really hard to make stuff on those budgets nowadays.”
One challenge came in attaching Joseph Quinn as Michael [Quinn was previously a Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2018, like Dunn in 2017, Simmons in 2018 and Carmoon in 2022]. The actor had filmed a key role in season four of Netflix megahit Stranger Things, which had yet to come out. “At the point we attached him, his agent said, ‘you’re going to need to shoot this now; afterwards you’ll never be able to get hold of him, because he’s going to go stratospheric,” says Dunn.
Quinn’s role, opposite newcomer Saura Lightfoot Leon as the teenage Maria, is distinct from his Stranger Things character, exhibiting a gruff charm and featuring a key nude scene. The producers are delighted with how the actor’s online following has embraced their smaller work, even prior to its release. “It’s been really enjoyable to have his fanbase championing and tracking the film,” says Dunn. “They really love Luna as well,” adds Simmons, who credits another Screen Star, casting director Heather Basten, with pushing for Quinn in the role alongside Carmoon. “Luna had her own fanbase anyway; the two merging is really interesting.”
Carmoon “has a real gift with cast” says Dunn. “She’s able to go places that would be quite difficult for other directors to access.” It’s “a trust thing” according to Simmons. “Especially with what all of the cast do in Hoard – they implicitly trust her vision, how she will work with them, that she can be a safe space for them to do those performances.”
French sales firm Alpha Violet made Hoard its first-ever English-language pickup in July of this year, and has several offers on the table already as Venice hots up.
Simmons and Dunn botht have busy upcoming slates, as well as collaborating with Starke on Carmoon’s next feature.
Dunn is out to directors for Amelia Westlake Was Never Here, a young adult novel adaptation series she is making through her commercial-focused production company Teen Club, in collaboration with Working Title. Through her company Delaval Film she is gearing up to shoot 2023 Screen Star Jack Gill’s Film4-backed Rob The Joint next summer, which she describes as “a Safdie Brothers-esque, Manchester-set Dog Day Afternoon.”
Simmons has several upcoming features in development at her Erebus Pictures with Stephanie Aspin, including Carmoon’s second feature , as well as a second feature from Julia Jackman, whose debut Bonus Track she produced and will play at multiple fall festivals; a debut feature, and a literary adaptation.
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