Projects in categories: Fiction

Synopsis

Paul, a young Parisian, meets Tracey, a London girl, on the internet. They become cyber-friends and Paul decides to make a surprise visit. One day, carrying a rucksack, he arrives at Tracey's home. She is having dinner with friends and is obviously not delighted about his unexpected arrival. When he sits at their table, Paul very soon understands that he should have warned her before coming . . .

Synopsis

This is a tragi-comic tale of a homeless person's attempts to reach for a coin.

Synopsis

When Harry turns up unexpectedly late at night to meet his old friend George at his office, the evening turns into a tense examination of their friendship.

Synopsis

Two small-time crooks break into a country house owned by a member of the establishment and stumble into a shocking situation neither anticipated.

Synopsis

Harry, a seasoned CIA agent in his mid forties, wants nothing more than to forget his years of duty in places like Nicaragua and to become his cover as a jazz club owner in Helsinki.





Natasha, a young and ambitious KGB agent with more chutzpah than experience, wants to secure a future for herself amid the uncertainty of the floundering KGB and Russian Republic.





Natasha's assignment to spy on Harry has blossomed into a torrid love affair. Like any two career couple they keep secrets from each other. But theirs have international implications.





The delicate balance of their life together is disrupted when a young, over eager CIA agent, Dave, arrives in Helsinki to intercept a videotape encoded with state secrets en route from New York - its concepts so hot that everybody who touched the tape is now dead. Dave pursues the unsuspecting courier, Max, a manic ex-bond trader who stumbled into the delivery job fresh from a prison sentence for SEC fraud.





For Natasha, the tape could be a ticket out of the KGB and into the American dream - if she crosses her boss. But as satellites hover overhead and the rusting Russian fleet leaks radiation nearby, absolutely everyone except Harry hatches a personal plan to exploit the encoded tape.





Harry is left to try to stop Natasha from getting herself killed - or worse, leaving him for America.

Synopsis

When an agency planner is dumped by her partner, she becomes aware that crafting other people's dreams may have made her too cynical to realise her own.

Synopsis

A boy is determined to reaffirm his belief in Santa Claus. His efforts gradually reveal to each member of the family that their own lives are as fragile as his world of make-believe.

Synopsis

A day in the life of a guy that works for the council, involving old women, bad smells, dogs and lino.

Synopsis

When it world-premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Honest was the centre of a frenzy of tabloid gossip and media spin. The reason? Its stars Nicole and Natalie Appleton and Melanie Blatt, are perhaps better known as three of the winsome quartet that make up the award-winning girl band All Saints. That the film also marked the directing debut of Eurythmics frontman Dave Stewart, here preferring to go under the moniker David A Stewart, further fuelled the hype.



Written by the duo responsible for a string of hits including Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, Porridge and The Commitments, Honest is an edgy black comedy set in late 1960s swinging London. The All Saints girls play streetwise sisters from the East End who have a lucrative sideline in armed robbery which they carry out dressed as men. Moving between the grime and gloom of their home turf, the neon lights of swinging Carnaby Street and the drug-fuelled sleaze of the decadent aristocracy, the sisters soon find themselves on the run when their latest heist brings them up against a local underworld boss (Corin Redgrave).



The cynical film world, hardnosed critics in particular, were ready to dismiss the film as a vanity project for all concerned, but its breezy energy and charismatic performances from its three lead newcomers laid such prejudices to rest. If there was one thing working against the film when it was released in the UK in May, it was its 18 certificate, which prevented the bulk of the singers' pre-teen fans from seeing it.

Synopsis

Set amidst the Carnaby Street, 'happenings' and hippie atmosphere of swinging 60s in London, Honest follows the escapades of three gun-toting, thieving sisters on a collision course with the world of peace, love and happiness.





The Chase sisters Gerry (Nicole Appleton), Mandy (Natalie Appleton) and Jo (Melanie Blatt) are a tight knit team: East End girls with an attitude and aura of energy and liberation. Unbeknownst to anyone, they've begun to burgle and thieve, masquerading behind iconic masks to conceal their feminine beauty. These disguised bandits not only challenge the law, but they threaten the 'old boy' code of the underworld gangs in East London. A world inhabited by their father, Tommy (James Cosmo), whose spirit has been crippled by a past tragedy.

Synopsis

A dark comedy.

Synopsis

In spite of a cast list boasting Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartlidge and Stephen Tompkinson, the real star of Hotel Splendide is the hotel itself. Director Terence Gross and his team spent more than a year searching for the perfect location. They finally found it in the Slieve Donard Hotel in Northern Ireland. "It had all the qualities we were looking for - a fairy tale element, a hint of gothic and was overwhelmingly big to dwarf the staff and guests," says producer Ildiko Kemeny.



Gross sees the Hotel Splendide as embodying the spirit of Mrs Blanche, the late matriarch of the family who still manages the crumbling establishment. "She created a very ingenious heating system that runs off human waste. After her death she has had herself cremated into it and has a kind of presence in the hotel," explains Gross. "It's very Oedipal, with the children still living inside her."



Although the film has what Cartlidge describes as "a European sniff about it" ("it's very unusual for a British film to veer away from naturalism," she says) Gross sees it as carrying a very British message. "The whole film is a metaphor for the way the British settle for less and feel that mediocrity is better than risk," he says. But if that sounds portentous, it is also leavened with an essentially British sense of humour, as outsider Kath (Collette) brings liberating chaos into the suffocating environment of the hotel.



The film, which is Gross's feature debut, was selected for this year's Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section.