Projects in genres: Drama

Synopsis

Directed by Sarah Gavron and produced by Stewart Mackinnon, This Little Life is the story of a premature baby's fragile existence, and of a mother's supreme trust and tragic betrayal. Rosemary Kay's screenplay was awarded the BBC's Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award and is an adaptation of her novel Between Two Eternities.

Luke is born prematurely weighing only one pound and four ounces. He is too small to be cradled in his mother's arms but can be held in the palm of her hand. Everything possible is done to keep him alive, but what does her son want? Luke's mother, Sadie, desperately wants him to have a voice and, through her friendship with a young boy, mother and son find a way to talk.

Synopsis

A contemporary cyber-thriller, Three Blind Mice tells the story of Thomas (Edward Furlong), a London based computer programmer who in his spare time visits 'webcam' sites around the web - grainy video portals into people's lives. As Thomas is visiting an online acquaintance he accidentally witnesses her brutal murder, hopelessly unable to act in time to save her. When police cybercrime investigator Claire is assigned to the case, she works with Thomas to eventually uncover a bizarre ring of murders that have been organised to be viewed live on the web.

Synopsis

Sir Thomas Fairfax (Dougray Scott), though aristocratic by birth, commanded the Parliamentary armies during the English Civil Wars. In the aftermath of years of bloodshed and chaos, Fairfax found himself increasingly stranded between his loyalty to the revolutionary cause of his comrade Oliver Cromwell (Tim Roth) and the loyalty he owed to his wife Lady Anne (Olivia Williams) and their shared class. Cromwell's determination to change the face of English society led directly to the Execution of King Charles I - an act of treachery that Fairfax was unable to condone.

Synopsis

Based on a true story, Sergeant Peter King (Kenneth Cranham) of the Army Dental Corps, too old to fight, and Private Leslie Cuthbertson (Leo Bill), a trainee dental mechanic in the Corps, are thrown together by their passionate desire to see active service. Armed with just two revolvers and a dozen grenades, King persuades Cuthbertson to join him on a mission to occupied France.

In a letter to Winston Churchill, King explains their intention to invade France and fight the Germans. After a number of failed attempts, they finally arrive by boat and stumble across a German radar station. They succeed in blowing up what they believe to be the main Operations Room, but are soon forced to make their escape as the entire compound unexpectedly erupts with gunfire and explosions. After narrow escapes from the Germans and a stray mine in the Channel, the two men are picked up at sea and interrogated as spies.

Identified as deserters, they are returned to their barracks to be court martialled. At the eleventh hour King and Cuthbertson are saved by the arrival of Major Merton (Derek Jacobi), Churchill's Chief Intelligence Advisor. Their letter has been received in Whitehall and Merton corroborates their heroic story. Exonerated of lying, King and Cuthbertson are nevertheless reprimanded by the Court for their behaviour, but receive an invitation to tea with the Prime Minister should they ever be in Whitehall.

Synopsis

Joanne Conlon's local church are replacing their statue of the Virgin Mary. Joanne is appalled as her grandmother claims she once saw this statue cry. She takes the Madonna home. But her father, Frank, has just been sacked. Joanne's mother, Sylvia becomes an instant success as a bingo caller, but Frank is furious - shouldn't he be the breadwinner?

Joanne's Aunt Doreen places the statue inside her chip shop. That evening the statue cries once more. Now people come from miles to see the miracle! The local priest offers to take the statue back home. It doesn't stay in the church long. When the back of the statue's head comes off a sponge falls out. Doreen had 'encouraged' the Virgin to cry so she could sell more chips!

Sylvia is offered a singing assignment, but Frank forbids it. His anger and jealousy boil over. He throws the statue into the Mersey. Sylvia jumps in after it. Frank jumps in to save his wife, forgetting he can't swim. Husband, wife and mother of God are all saved by emergency helicopter.

Joanne finds the perfect home for the icon, on the grave of her grandmother. As the Virgin stands on the grave the icon starts to cry - all by herself!

Synopsis

A documentary, a drama, a story of myth and murder. Wanted is a weird, wilderness, western, set in the Dakota Badlands, where the last herd of buffalo cross the paths of beat-up pick up trucks smuggling bootleg whiskey onto the rez'. This is the mysterious world of the tribal cop, where DNA and dreams are accorded equal value in the hunt for a killer, where mere facts are not enough. This is the story of their loves, lives, work and the mysterious case of the Rapid Creek deaths.

The facts are clear - in a little over 18 months, 8 corpses have been dragged out of a creek. Suspecting race hate as a motive, the Sioux Indians are living in fear.

Intelligent, stylish and unconventional, Wanted is a feature length real life drama that uses both documentary and fiction techniques, as well as the latest digital film technology to combine film and digital video.

As the Sam Peckinpah quote at the beginning of the film alludes to, the clinical facts contained in purist documentary often fall short of the moral truth of a situation. It seems that nowhere is this truer than on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where Wanted was shot.

Synopsis

Eleven year old David Wiseman is mad about cricket but no good at it. He has all the kit but none of the skill, and he's a laughing stock at school. So when a Jamaican family move in next door and build a cricket net in the back garden, David is in seventh heaven.

But this is 1960s England, and when the neighbours start to make life difficult for the new arrivals, David's Jewish family is caught in the middle, and he has to choose between fitting in and standing up for the new friends who have turned his world upside down.

Synopsis

Set in a steamy Glasgow of the early 1950s, the film focuses on the existential crisis of Joe (Ewan McGregor), a rootless young drifter who finds work on a barge owned by the down-to-earth Les (Peter Mullan) and his enigmatic wife Ella (Tilda Swinton). One afternoon Joe and Les happen upon a corpse of a young woman floating in the water. Accident? Suicide? Murder?

As the police investigate the case and a suspect is arrested, it becomes evident that Joe knows more about the drowned woman than he is letting on. Meanwhile, against the background of this mysterious death and the 'murder' investigation, Joe and Ella embark on an intimate and passionate affair.
 
Tim Cumming, writing in The Guardian, 8 August 2003:
Alexander Trocchi was the smack-addled icon of beat literature, whose writings have been eclipsed by a lurid life of porn, pimping and dissolution in New York, Paris and London. But with a new film out adapted from his novel Young Adam, the Glasgow-born writer's life and work are ripe for re-evaluation.

 
 

Synopsis

North Africa, 1960s. An idealistic young English gentleman Simon Murray (Paul Fox) is driven to join the French Foreign Legion after a failed romance. Simon’s romantic illusions are soon shattered when he encounters his fellow recruits, including Dupont (Tom Hardy.) They have all volunteered to escape a past far less innocent than Simon’s.

A sadistic training routine forges the recruits together. As fully-fledged Legionnaires they set out to do battle against the insurgents facing deadly firefights among the villages, hills and deserts of North Africa. But when French President De Gaulle grants Algerian independence, the Legion sides with the ‘Pied Noir’ French Nationalists against mother France. Loyalties are torn apart. Comrade is turned against comrade. Simon and Dupont must face each other across a moral divide, their conscience dictating their actions; blurring the distinction between hero and deserter.

Synopsis

Anti-Racist Neo-Nazi campaign film for Norwegian State TV.

Synopsis

The wife of a sheep farmer faces several challenges as a newcomer to a village.

Synopsis

Two young Americans chasing The American Dream on the B roads of Britain, find the wheels coming off their Jack Kerouac inspired fantasy.