Rising young Scottish director David Mackenzie,whose latest film Asylum screens in Berlin's main competition, ishatching two new Scottish-based projects.

Through Glasgow-based Sigma Productions,Mackenzie is set to direct an adaptation of Peter Jinks' novel Hallam Foe.A dark tale of an adolescent whose pet hobby is voyeurism, the film promises tobe in similar register to Mackenzie's debut feature, Young Adam.

The protagonist is a 17-year-old boy who isconvinced his stepmother murdered his mother and ends up living homeless on therooftops of Edinburgh. Mackenzie will be showing a version of the screenplay todistributors during the Berlinale. Sigma's regular production partner Zentropais poised to board the project.

Mackenzie is also attached to directHighlands-based drama, White Male Heart, one of the titles in thisyear's Berlin co-production market.

A co-production between Glasgow's BrockenSpectre and Sweden's Hepp Films, this is an adaptation of Ruaridh Nicoll'snovel about two young men whose friendship is put in jeopardy when a beautifulyoung woman comes between them.

Mackenzie says his aim with the film is "to make the ScottishHighlands feel like an epic and continental landscape" and to get away fromBrigadoon-like stereotypes of heather, kilts and shortbread. He is working onthe screenplay with playwright David Harrower. The producers are HelenaDanielson and David Smith.

"It would be fabulous to be making two filmsback to back in Scotland," Mackenzie told Screen, but acknowledged he isalso fielding offers from US producers.