Bypass, backed by the BFI and Film I Vast, is being produced by Third Films in Newcastle and is due to shoot in March.

Fresh from his success with Berberian Sound Studio [pictured], Illuminations Films’ Keith Griffiths has given further details of a raft of projects that are expected to move into production shortly.

These include Bypass, the new feature from Duane Hopkins (Better Things). Bypass, backed by the BFI and Film I Vast, is being produced by Third Films in Newcastle and is due to shoot in March. Griffiths is executive producing and The Match Factory handles international sales. The film is expected to be ready for Cannes 2014.

Simon Pummell’s thriller Brand New-U is also shooting in March. This is an Irish-Dutch-UK coproduction produced by Janine Marmot’s Hot Property and with support from, among others, the Netherlands Film Fund, The Irish Film Board and the BFI. The Dutch producer is Rinkel. The Match Factory is again handling sales.

Palme D’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery Of Kings is being produced through Kick The Machine and Illuminations. The Match Factory are coproducers. The aim is to start shooting before the end of the year.

It’s set in a village on the border between Laos and Thailand where soldiers have mysteriously fallen asleep.

Match Factory is also representing The Quay Brothers’ long-gestating Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass, which is now being re-constituted so that it will now be 65% animation.

Meanwhile, Chris Petit’s new feature The James Jesus Tapes, which Griffiths is billing as “a return for Chris to the 1980s,” is edging closer to production. Blending fact and fiction, this is about a head of the CIA in the 1950s who promises to “reveal where all the bodies are buried.” The BFI is supporting the film.

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