Projects in genres: Drama

Synopsis

We follow the ups and downs of a toddler's day, alternating between the baby's point of view and that of the harassed, unseen mother.

Synopsis

A little girl's bad dreams are a refuge from a much more disturbing reality.

Synopsis

In a run-down bus station in the North East, Clint takes pity on a hungry man. He gives him some sandwiches that his dad, Johnno, asked him to guard while he attends a job interview. When Johnno returns and sees that Clint has given away their lunch, he snaps.

Synopsis

Matt and Ross leave Birmingham behind for a weeks holiday in Brighton. Matt is cynical, love can't touch him. Ross meanwhile is a nervous mothers boy on the verge of another breakdown.

The film follows the lads' antics and subsequent liaisons during their week away. Matt drives into the local prostitute scene while Ross is seduced by local girl Kelly, who takes a firm hand with him and his rubber wearing fetish.

Matt's desperate for love, even though he doesn't realise it, and Ross is getting all the love he can handle.

At the end of the holiday, the question is, do they return home or start a fresh life in Brighton?

Beach Boys is a fresh, touching and unusual take on male sexual angst.

Synopsis

London 1961. Alex, a jazz musician, and Faith, a singer, share an uneasy life together. The relationship 'on the rocks' Faith is willing to try to win back Alex by any means. Alas her attempts at making Alex jealous by leaving the club with a stranger backfire. Assuming that Faith has found a new beau Alex leaves their flat not knowing that Faith has been waiting for him.

Synopsis

Maya, a young Mexican, crosses the border to join her tough elder sister Rosa who works as a cleaner in a down town block, home to some of LA's most powerful corporate clients.

The two sisters have a deep but fiery relationship which is further stretched by Sam, a talented and anarchistic American activist, who is part of a dynamic campaign opposed to older methods of trade union organising. They have a simple motto, 'No Justice, No Peace' and embark on a peaceful but highly imaginative guerrilla campaign for trade union recognition against cleaning companies and powerful corporate owners of the tower blocks.

Ken Loach's first US-set film exposes a side of Los Angeles that to date has been swept under the corporate carpet.

Written by Paul Laverty, Bread And Roses is set around the early 1990s Justice for Janitors strike which saw an army of exploited cleaners - the invisible Latino immigrants - take to the streets to protest for basic workers' rights. The film stars Pilar Padilla and Elpidia Carrillo as the two sisters involved in the struggle and Adrien Brody as a union activist who leads the campaign against their employers.

For Loach, the appeal was that "the film was set in another world that existed side by side with the movie world. It's about organising immigrant workers, (who are) very vulnerable and easily exploited. Having worked on a film in Nicaragua (Carla's Song), this seemed another element in the same wider story, the relationship between the US and countries that are essentially its colonies, economically and culturally."

The film was shot according to Loach's pared-down aesthetics, with a high shooting ratio that allowed the director to let the dialogue run on until he had what he needed. Making the film in the US with a significant number of extras meant the budget, at $5.5m, was higher than usual. It also meant Loach had to occasionally break the rules "which is always quite entertaining", he says.

Synopsis

Family high action adventure, aka 'Rebel Zone', features the rescue of hostages and gold bullion seized by armed terrorists led by a maritime Rebel Warlord. Royal Naval Frigate 'HMS Monarch', despatches a Royal Marine detail to track and confront the enemy at their tropical island HQ.

Synopsis

Local newspaper journalist, Cameron Colley, is setting the world to rights; his articles are idealistic, written from the viewpoint of the underdog. A twisted serial killer seems to have the same motives; his murders are committed on behalf of the underdog. The two stories begin to merge and Cameron finds himself inextricably and inexplicably implicated by the brutal killer. The arms dealer Cameron plans to expose is found literally 'disarmed' before he can put pen to paper. The brewery chief, loathed by Cameron, who sold up at the expense of his workers, finds himself permanently unemployable. And the malpractising doctor and corrupt newspaper proprietor meet with similarly sinister ends. The police are convinced of Cameron's guilt and so are half his friends and colleagues. Cameron is forced to employ all his investigative skills to find the real killer and his motive.
 
Based on Iain Banks novel "Complicity".

Synopsis

Post-colonial India of 1950's, and Cotton Mary, (Madhur Jeffrey) an Anglo-Indian nurse befriends expatriate Lily Macintosh (Greta Scacchi) at the premature birth of her baby. Lily's husband John, (James Wilby) a BBC correspondent, is away working, and she is exhausted and emotional after the birth, and further devastated after realising she is unable to breast feed her child.

Mary provides a vital lifeline by taking the baby on daily trips to her crippled sister, Blossom, a wet nurse who provides milk for the infant.

The success that Mary has in arranging for the feeding of the baby makes her indispensable to Lily, who offers her a permanent position in her home as a Nanny working with her family. Mary's relationship to the baby and her burgeoning friendship with Lily gives her a unique position to operate.

Mary abuses this relationship, and deviously does everything she can to gain control of the house and achieve the prestige of being both associated with, and of extreme importance to a British family.

Cotton Mary offers a thought provoking insight into the ambitions of an Anglo-Indian woman trapped in a class-ridden, status conscious society.

Synopsis

Somewhere in the countryside, an assassin slips into a country mansion with orders to kill its aged occupant. Somewhere in the city, a wounded thug blasts his way into a flat and takes a husband and wife hostage.


The old man in the mansion is a legendary crime Boss who has just made the fatal mistake of ordering the elimination of the rival gang. Betrayed by one of his own, his men have been rounded up in a bloody ambush. One of his thugs escapes and follows the Driver of the winning side back to his flat. Desperate to stay alive, the thug knows he will have to swap sides. His hostage, the driver, is his way in.


The Assassin has no intention of killing the Boss quickly; he's intrigued by this legend. He delays . . . to have a chat . . . to have a smoke . . . but little does he know what he's getting into. It is not the first time the Boss has stared down the barrel of a gun; at first he bides his time listening to this cowboy, just waiting for the right moment to start playing his own games.


Bleeding badly from a bullet in the shoulder, the Thug thinks he has found safety with the Driver and his Wife. However, the Driver is not all he seems and is in just as much danger as the Thug. Seeing events spiral out of control, the Wife decides to take matters into her own hands.


These stories are interwoven in a film about the necessity to keep talking in the face of death, even if you are the one holding the gun.

Synopsis

Although Atom Egoyan's first adaptation The Sweet Hereafter won the Cannes jury prize and scored two Academy Award nominations, the writer-director was initially uncertain about tackling another novel as the basis of his next film. But when Icon head of development Karen Glasser sent him William Trevor's Felicia's Journey he was won over.

"I was struck by the brilliance of the writing, the characters' depth and how many of the themes resonated with me," says Egoyan.

The story follows naive Irish teenager Felicia as she treks to Birmingham to find her lover Johnny, but instead encounters the sinister and faintly comic Mr Hilditch.

Egoyan, who was born in Cairo and grew up in Canada, brought an outsider's viewpoint to the film's locations, small-town Ireland and the industrial sprawl of the English Midlands. "I felt a responsibility," he says, "that both locations be presented with honesty and accuracy."

Egoyan also found working with British and Irish actors a fresh experience. He praised the calibre of the actors who include newcomer Elaine Cassidy as Felicia and Bob Hoskins as Hilditch. Felicia's Journey is firmly stamped with Egoyan's style and preoccupations. The film includes regular Egoyan collaborators such as DoP Paul Sarossy, editor Susan Shipson and composer Mychael Danna, while the director's muse Arsinee Khanjian plays Hilditch's extraordinary mother Gala. The film's structure jumps back and forward in time, incorporating video and film footage, in a way that will be familiar to Egoyan fans.

Felicia's Journey was released in the UK in October last year to critical acclaim.

Synopsis

Following is a wickedly clever story of how a young man's obsession with following people leads him into a dark underworld. Bill, the unlikely hero, is a marginalized but intriguing Everyman who follows strangers at random on the street. When Cobb a man Bill has been following, catches him in the act, Bill is drawn into Cobb's world of breaking into flats and prying into the personal lives of their victims. In Cobb, Bill finds a strange companionship, part mentor, part confessor and part evil twin. With an ingenious structure that involves flashforwards and doubling back, the film test and teases our knowledge and understanding just as it leads its hero into deeper and darker waters. This first feature heralds, in Christopher Nolan, a promising new talent to the indie film scene.