Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

The media and the police are baffled: Four teenagers have been missing for 18 days. With everyone fearing the worst, Liz (Thora Birch) suddenly appears from an underground bunker - alone. She is so traumatised she is unable to recount the events surrounding her disappearance.

A police psychiatrist, Phillippa is called in to counsel Liz and to try and unlock her tormented mind.

It would seem that Liz was caught up in a teenage prank that went drastically wrong. However it also becomes clear that Liz is unable to sort fact from fiction. Is she so disturbed by the experience that she has blanked out the truth? Or is there another reason for her confusion?

What really happened down the Hole?

Synopsis

London, the present. Catherine and Jonathan are planning to get married. But Jonathan - a high-flying corporate lawyer - spends most of his evenings out with clients and his glamorous assistant Emily. Catherine feels increasingly lonely and deserted and begins to suspect that Jonathan is having an affair.

In despair, she turns to her best friend, Renée, who introduces her to Jeremy, a private detective. He proposes setting up a 'honeytrap' for Catherine's husband-to-be, a meeting with an attractive woman to test his fidelity. But Jonathan withstands the honeytrap woman's advances, and so the wedding goes ahead as planned.

Catherine's worst fears become true when Jeremy finds out that Jonathan has been meeting the honeytrap woman again. Jonathan, meanwhile, suspects that Catherine has hired a private detective to follow him. When the 'honeytrap' woman is murdered, Catherine immediately suspects Jonathan while Jonathan suspects Catherine of being involved. Catherine seeks refuge with Jeremy, only to find that he too suspects her of murdering the woman.

Synopsis

A tragic love story set against a background of wealth and social hypocrisy.

Lily Bart is twenty-nine and very beautiful, but is flawed by her upbringing. She needs a wealthy husband to maintain her precarious foothold in the elite world of the New York of the Belle Epoque. It is a world of vast wealth and moral bankruptcy. In conforming to social expectations, she ignores her chance of happiness with the man she loves.

Her quest for a husband comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy married man. The society which once culitvated her now rejects her and she starts to slip down the social ladder. Redeemed by her recognition of the falseness of the life she used to lead, she declines to use her secret weapon to achieve her original goal.

Life for Lily becomes impossible and she moves step by step towards her own inevitable personal tragedy.

Synopsis

Jim, a nine year old boy, whose grandfather is depressed and refusing to eat, hits on a way of trying to rekindle his grandfather's will to live. Jim had frequently been told by his grandfather about a 'joke' he used to play when he was Jim's age. Jim's idea is to repeat the same joke but before he can carry it out his grandfather dies. Jim decides to go ahead with the joke anyway.

Synopsis

Shocked by the death of a friend, three men try to take their lives in hand. But how far will they go?

A gay man falls under the spell of a young woman. How far will his heart betray him? A happily married man encounters a wonderful french woman at the funeral - and says too much. Should he meet her again? A young man returns after years travelling, searching for that elusive 'something' in his life, and finally finds the woman of his dreams in his own back yard. But will he have to lose his best friend for love?

Three stories intermingle, intertwine and glance off each other to reveal surprising perspectives in this sharp look at the human comedy of love.

Synopsis

Set in the late 1920s, The Luzhin Defence tells the story of a shambling unworldly chess Grand Master (John Turturro) who arrives in the Italian lakes to play the match of his life and unexpectedly finds the love of his life.

Discovering his prodigious talent in a boyhood overshadowed by his parents' failing marriage, Luzhin's lyrical passion for chess has become his refuge and rendered the real world a phantom.

Already matched up by her family to the very suitable Comte de Stassard, when Natalia (Emily Watson) meets Luzhin she is drawn to the erratic genius and offers him a glimpse outside of his chess obsession. But it is a world he is not equipped to deal with, and his two worlds collide to tragic effect.

Synopsis

The year is 1927. A little Jewish girl Fegele, lives happily with her father, a cantor, and her grandmother in a Russian village. But with the ever-present threat of persecution, her father leaves for America to find work intending to send for his family. Soon after he leaves, violence engulfs the village. Fegele is bundled off with some fleeing villagers who hope to get to America, but she ends up on a boat to England.

Fegele is re-named Suzie, sent to a Christian foster home and to a school where she is forbidden to speak Yiddish but learns to sing. Ten years later she leaves England for Paris, where she becomes a chorus girl and befriends an ambitious blonde Russian dancer, Lola. She starts to save, hoping to earn enough money to pay for her passage to America. Together Lola and Suzie find jobs in the new opera company of impresario Felix Periman.

Suzie falls in love with gypsy horse-handler Cesar, while Lola falls for Dante Dominio, an arrogant Italian opera singer. When the German army invades Paris, Dante, with Lola at his side, immediately collaborates with the Nazis, while Suzie joins Cesar and his band of gypsy musicians.

The Nazis have plans to round up the Jews and Gypsies. When Dante betrays Suzie, Lola decides to leave him. She tells Suzie that she will help them both get out. Suzie wants to stay and fight but Cesar encourages her to leave. Suzie is heartbroken, but eventually agrees.

In the mid-Atlantic, the ship to America is bombed. Suzie is rescued but Lola drowns.

Once in America, Suzie continues her search for her father, which finally leads her to Hollywood.

Synopsis

A gang of kids find a strange house with an overgrown garden where they play. Only once do they meet the man who lives there, a dead-beat alcoholic with a free and easy spirit who welcomes them. The children see him as a romantic character in stark contrast to their neurotically house proud parents.

Synopsis

In this new film, starring Lee Evans and Kathy Burke, the Martyns, to outsiders, are the kind of people that you'd cross the road to avoid, but though they're the family from hell, once you get to know them you can't help but love them.

Robert Martyn (Lee Evans), an unemployed but optimistic loser, lives with his adoring and long-suffering wife Angie (Kathy Burke). They have two children - Katie, their heavily pregnant fourteen year-old daughter, and angelic Little Bob, their eight year old son who worships his Dad.

Everyday he wakes up thinking that things will turn out better for him and his family, and that one day he'll win one of the competitions he's always entering. All he wants to do is give his wife and kids everything they really deserve.

When Robert discovers that yet again he hasn't won the 'Dream Holiday' of a lifetime, a competition in his local newspaper, he finally snaps. He decides to take the law into his own hands; if he can't win a holiday, he'll just have to steal one!

Synopsis

It's a story that's been told for 2000 years, but never like this. The Miracle Maker is a brilliant new portrayal of Jesus, uniquely innovative yet convincingly authentic. Powerfully told through the voices of a distinguished cast, it begins with the chance encounter between a sick young girl, Tamar (Rebecca Callard), her Pharisee father Jairus (William Hurt) and the quietly resolute carpenter (Ralph Fiennes).

Tamar becomes one of an ever-increasing following fascinated by the spiritual strength and leadership of this charismatic man, but her father and other people in authority are troubled by Jesus' ability to inspire the people. Plotting against him, the rich and powerful Ben Azra (Anthony Sher) arranges the murder of Jesus' faithful friend John the Baptist (Richard E. Grant) and stirs up the authorities against him. While Jesus shocks the leaders by healing the crazed woman Mary Magdalene (Miranda Richardson), Jairus knows he could ask Jesus to save his dying daughter, as his wife Rachel (Julie Christie) begs him to do.

Now the unstoppable conflict between belief and authority will come to a head when the great pilgrimage reaches Jerusalem in a confrontation between the power of God and the power of Rome, wielded by Pilate (Ian Holm).

Vividly effective, this epic international co-production combines the rich detail of three-dimensional model animation, graphically striking two-dimensional animation and sophisticated computer effects to achieve extraordinary intensity and realism. It has been written especially to appeal to children and families, who will find themselves irresistibly involved in the power struggles and passion, despair and elation of the man who is 'The Miracle Maker'.

Synopsis

Eamonn Manley (Kris Marshall) hasn't much going for him. He's 24, he works in a Dating Agency (Amoré - 'Your Love is Our Affair') and he lives with his Ma. At night he hides in his room, dreaming of superhero adventures, romance and a girl he's too scared to approach.

Yet his life takes on a new direction when, after a miraculous encounter with Mary Mallory (Tara Lynn O' Neill), the local good time girl, Eamonn discovers he has the highest sperm count in Ireland. With male fertility rates plummeting around the world Eamonn finds himself in demand. Seduced by the possibility of doing good and a taste of the high life, Eamonn is persuaded by his friend Millicent (Bronagh Gallagher) to start providing a unique service to the good ladies of Belfast.

With his new-found confidence, he finally finds the courage to ask out the girl of his dreams. Rosie (Kathy Kiera Clarke) works at the local funeral home and has proved impervious to the approaches of more bullish guys. Entirely unaware of his new profession she finds herself drawn to the innocent, awkward Eamonn. And so begins Eamonn's bizarre double life: Lothario to half the city by day and shy lover to Rosie by night. His life is weirder and more wonderful than he could ever have imagined.

Meanwhile the 'most fertile man in Ireland' has come to the attention of the local Protestant hardmen, led by Mad Dog Billy Wilson (James Nesbitt), formerly 'the most-feared and psychotic' paramilitary in Belfast who now finds himself in a world that no longer requires or endorses his services. Aware that the rising birth rate in the Catholic community means the Protestants will no longer be in the majority, he is determined to get Eamonn to even the score.

Synopsis

The Navigators follows the fortunes of a group of rail track workers based at a South Yorkshire depot as the privatisation of British Rail takes effect. When Harpic (so called because he's clean around the bend), the depot boss, gives Paul, Mick and the rest of the gang their new working brief, the company's 'mission statement', 'performance-related pay' and no paid holidays seems like a joke. But before long the choice is very clear to the gang; take their chances with redundancy cash and life as casual agency workers, or work for the company under the new rules...