Projects in genres: Drama

Synopsis

Behind any great man, there’s always a greater woman...
Joan Castleman (Glenn Close): a still-striking beauty with impeccable credentials, the perfect alpha wife. Forty years spent sacrificing her own talent, dreams and ambitions to fan the flames of her charismatic husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) and his skyrocketing literary career. Ignoring his infidelities and excuses because of his “art” with grace and humour.
Their fateful pact has built a marriage upon uneven compromises. And Joan’s reached her breaking point. On the eve of Joe’s Nobel Prize for Literature, the normally shy Joan is pushed uncomfortably into the spotlight, where long-kept secrets are in danger of being illuminated.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Gala Presentations - World premiere

Synopsis

As devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, sisters Alex and Luisa and their mother, Ivanna, are united in The Truth. Alex looks up to her confident older sister, while striving to follow in Ivanna’s footsteps as a ‘good Witness’. But when Luisa starts to question the advice of the Elders, she makes a life-altering transgression that threatens to expel her from the congregation. Unless Ivanna and Alex can persuade her to return, they must shun her completely. This challenge becomes more painful when their family is faced with another heartbreaking test of faith.
Written and directed by Daniel Kokotajlo, a former Jehovah’s Witness, 'Apostasy' is a remarkable and authentic debut film, providing rare insight into the complex nature of faith, family, duty and love.

Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - World Premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - First Feature Competition

Synopsis

Ines and Emilie, two estranged sisters travel through Europe towards a mystery destination. Over a few short days they are forced together to sift through seismic changes in their lives. Ines is the extrovert, a photographer who lives in New York; Emilie, the introvert, has asked her sister to join her on a mystery trip. As the two drive into the wooded European countryside and reach their destination, it gradually dawns on Ines why she has been asked to accompany her sister. Horrified at first, she fights to understand her sister's intentions as the two women confront their unsettled past and, more importantly, their future.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Platform - World premiere

Synopsis

Life is not easy for our young Barbara Thorson. Defiant, precocious, outspoken, and a loner, Barbara relates more to the make-believe world of Dungeons & Dragons. At home, she makes life difficult for her older sister, Karen, who is responsible for taking care of her and her brother. At school, psychologist Mrs. Mollé takes an interest in Barbara's increasingly worrisome behaviour. As she deals with loss and bullying, Barbara's imagined life begins spilling into her real one and she becomes obsessed with what she sees as her quest: killing giants. It's only when she's forced to face the truth and overcome her fears that Barbara is able to confront her demons.
Based on the Man of Action Graphic Novel 'I Kill Giants' created by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Discovery and TIFF Kids - World premiere

Synopsis

Set over 4 days in March 1918 in the trenches on the front line, a small group of soldiers wait to be bombarded by enemy artillery, anticipating certain death. The story charts the tension and claustrophobia of the officers’ dug-out as new recruit, 18-year-old Lieutenant Raleigh joins the Company commanded by 20 year old Captain Stanhope, his former childhood friend and hero, who has changed almost beyond recognition.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Headline Gala Screening

Synopsis

The year is 1953. Joseph Stalin seems in hale (albeit paranoid) condition, terrorizing everyone, summarily killing off any suspected dissenters, and keeping even his cronies on edge. That comes to an abrupt halt one morning when the dictator is found belly-up on the floor of his office following a stroke. What follows is director Armando Iannucci's version of hijinks: the plotting and jostling for power by a group of connivers who cowered under their boss. All of the top lackeys are in contention - milquetoast Malenkov, wiseguy Khrushchev, bewildered Molotov, thuggish Zhukov, and depraved Beria, with Stalin's drunken son Vasily and jaded daughter Svetlana off to the side. They move with the clumsiness of aspirants not up to the job but desperate for it anyway.
A feature adaptation of Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin’s acclaimed graphic novel.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Platform - World premiere
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2018 - Spotlight
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018

Synopsis

The story of an ordinary woman who makes an extraordinary decision.
Tara loves her children deeply and to all those around her, her life is seemingly perfect. But Tara feels trapped. She knows there is something fundamentally missing. Something unfulfilled. Something unknown. When her friends and family fail to understand the depth of her desperation, her ideas and feelings are so overwhelming that she has to run away, to find a place where she can be herself again. She goes on a courageous and perilous journey, leaving her husband and children.
Through a series of dangerous and incendiary encounters, she discovers the woman she really is, what she really feels and the life she really wants.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Special Presentations - World premiere

Synopsis

In the wilderness of Northern Sweden's highlands, four men reunite to pay tribute to a dearly departed college friend but find themselves hopelessly lost after an ill-advised shortcut. Tired, hungry, and besieged by storm clouds, they stumble upon a derelict house. Paying little mind to the eldritch markings and artifacts that lay strewn within and around the cabin, they resolve to spend the night inside — a decision that may very well damn them all.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Midnight Madness - World premiere

Synopsis

The tall, handsome Abdul Karim was just twenty-four years old when he arrived in England from Agra to wait at tables during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. An assistant clerk at Agra Central Jail, he suddenly found himself a personal attendant to the Empress of India herself. Within a year, he was established as a powerful figure at court, becoming the queen's teacher or Munshi, and instructing her in Urdu and Indian affairs. Devastated by the death of John Brown, her Scottish ghillie, the queen had at last found a replacement. But her intense and controversial relationship with the Munshi led to a near revolt in the royal household.
A tender love story between an ordinary Indian and his elderly queen, a relationship that survived the best attempts to destroy it.
Based on the book 'Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closet Confidant' by Shrabani Basu.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Special Presentations

Synopsis

In the wake of the sexual revolution and the rise of the women’s movement, the 1973 tennis match between women’s world champion Billie Jean King and ex-men’s-champ and serial hustler Bobby Riggs was billed as the 'Battle of the Sexes' and became one of the most watched televised sports events of all time, reaching 90 million viewers around the world. As the rivalry between King and Riggs kicked into high gear, off-court each was fighting more personal and complex battles. The fiercely private King was not only championing for equality, but also struggling to come to terms with her own sexuality, as her friendship with Marilyn Barnett developed. And Riggs, one of the first self-made media-age celebrities, wrestled with his gambling demons, at the expense of his family and wife Priscilla. Together, Billie and Bobby served up a cultural spectacle that resonated far beyond the tennis court, sparking discussions in bedrooms and boardrooms that continue to reverberate today.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Special Presentations - International premiere

Synopsis

The story of the whirlwind love affair between poet Percy Shelley and 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecroft that led to the creation of the world's first science fiction novel 'Frankenstein'.
Passionate and rebellious teenager Mary Wollstonecroft finds a kindred spirit in poet Percy Shelley. They are bound together by a natural chemistry and progressive ideas that are beyond the boundaries of their age and time. Mary and Percy declare their love for each other and much to her family's horror they elope together, joined by Mary's half sister Claire. At Lord Byron's house at Lake Geneva the idea of Frankenstein is conceived when a challenge is put to all house guests to write a ghost story. An incredible character is created by Mary, but society at the time puts little value in a woman writing such a literary masterpiece, and Mary is forced to challenge the society to protect her monster and forge her own identity.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Gala Presentations - World premiere

Synopsis

It is 1962, Florence and Edward, a young couple are on their honeymoon at an overcast English seaside spot. Florence is a disciplined violinist, raised in a cold vice of middle-class repression, where her mother crushed any sense of impulse with propriety. Edward offers Florence some promise of freedom. He was raised in the countryside in a more volatile family, and found liberation in literature and ideas. The two arrive at a Chesil Beach guest house in love and ready to begin their life together, but hopelessly ill-equipped for their first night.
Adapted for the screen by Ian McEwan from his best-selling novella.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Gala Screening - Love Strand