Charles Henri Belleville

Charles Henri Belleville directed a terrific ultra-low budget film set in the “way north” of Scotland back in 2007 called TheInheritance, duly garlanded with UK indie nominations.

He was 23 at the time and had $8,000 (£5,000), actor Tom Hardy, his blacksmith father’s garage and a camper van with which to work. When the van broke down, he had to write the engine failure into the script because he did not have enough money to fix it. Cut to 2011, and Belleville, who worked in the marketing department at UK distributor Vertigo Films, was ready with his second feature, Mighty’s Dynamo, a “dramedy” set over one night in London, written by and starring Hardy again, alongside his girlfriend Charlotte Riley. In the interim there have been documentaries, the Berlin Talent Campus and the Film4/UKFC Directors’ Lab. “I knew how to make a film for £5k,” he says. “But I wanted to learn everything else”. After Mighty’s Dynamo will come The Anomaly, from a script by Simon Lewis (“a cross between Monsters and Memento”). And finally The Gregory Gang, the origin story of highwayman Dick Turpin. “I’m lucky because I knew I wanted to do this from the time I was 10 years old,” he says. “I made endless films at home for nothing. So when it came to The Inheritance, £5k was a lot to me.”

Contact: Ian Benson - ibenson@theagency.co.uk