Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

Only after a 10-year period can a mother bring a father and son to an understanding of each other - love can conquer all, even in the bleakest situations.

Synopsis

An exploration of the treasure of Russia's National Library, where Vassily Stepanovich Zvarychuk, curator of the recorded music collection and conductor of the Library's orchestra, is the living embodiment of Nietzsche's claim that 'music is the means by which the passions enjoy themselves'.

Synopsis

The true story of Sandra who at 21 discovers she has an inoperable brain tumour. The film moves from the comic to the tragic and the realistic to the surreal.

Synopsis

Giacomo Campiotti's A Time To Love is a romantic drama spanning 100 years and three different couples. Ciaran Hinds and Juliet Aubrey star in the first episode as two lovers in colonial Africa during the Boer War, whose passionate love affair is frustrated by the conventions of the time. The film then skips to Nazi-occupied Paris, where the relationship between a young French woman and her Russian lover unravels because of her jealousy. Finally, in contemporary Italy, a young girl nurses a teenage boy back to health through her devotion.

Campiotti, whose debut Like Two Crocodiles won a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film in 1995, employed unorthodox means to research his film. Keen to write about love, he asked first friends, then strangers - through a small ad in a newspaper - for stories about love. His only stipulation was that they be real. Sifting through the mountains of letters and notes he was sent, he realised that there were key moments that all the stories shared, which mirrored the seasons of the year. He then teamed up with Alexander Adabachian, with whom he co-wrote Like Two Crocodiles.

With financing in place from Italian, French and British sources and a European cast including Ciaran Hinds, Juliet Aubrey and Natacha Regnier, the film cranked up its staggered shoot in late 1998. It premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 1999.

Synopsis

Peter and Martha, Claire and Gabriel, and Naty and Guiseppe have discovered the magical moments that belong to all love stories. A Time to Love is a captivating and romantic tale of love's evolution traced through three different couples in three different eras, each couple taking over where the last one left off. The first romance is set in South Africa during the Boer War, the second in Paris during the German occupation in World War II and the third takes place in present day Italy. Each story is unique, but all are entwined with that invisible thread which bind humanity in a much more profound manner than one made up of tradition and history.

Synopsis

After closing time at the Gwyn Arms, Tom pours himself a pint, lights his pipe, selects his favourite Gladys Knight single on the juke box, and remembers the good old days...

Synopsis

A day in the life story of three young people who meet through a chance encounter and decide to become criminals together for one brief moment.

Synopsis

A rare UK-Norwegian collaboration, Aberdeen reunites actor Stellan Skarsgard with Hans Petter Moland, the acclaimed writer-director of their much admired 1996 feature Zero Kelvin. An emotional road movie, it co-stars Lena Headey as a young lawyer reluctantly fulfilling her ailing mother's request that she bring her alcoholic father back from Oslo to the Scottish oil industry capital of Aberdeen. Her intention is to enrol him in a rehab programme, but en route they are both forced to re-examine their relationship and the reasons for their trip.

'It's a very tough and exceptionally unsentimental account of the bond that develops between the daughter and the father during their journey,' explains co-producer John McGrath. 'When I read it I loved the characters, the quality of the writing and the fact it was set in Scotland. It felt a very natural co-production project rather than some Euro-pudding and it actually reactivates a long dormant UK-Norway co-production treaty.'

Synopsis

At the centre of About Adam, is a Dublin family consisting of a mother Peggy, three daughters Lucy, Laura and Alice and son David. Into their lives comes Adam - an enigmatic young man.

At first he meets Lucy who finds him shy and gentle. As she herself is a singer/waitress in a restaurant and is extrovert and fun-loving, she surprises herself by this attachment. The relationship grows until she is head-over-heals in love with Adam. Indeed she is the one who proposes marriage to him - which he accepts. The date is set.

What Lucy doesn't know is that her older and more serious sister Laura has been bumping into Adam, in all sorts of places. She has a different view of him, finding him intellectual and passionate. Conversation and literature draw them together until, despite her guilt, the inevitable happens and they begin an affair. But then, Adam's acceptance of Lucy's proposal leaves Laura in a quandary, not knowing where all this leading to, but reluctant to give him up.

Meanwhile little brother David is having a classic problem - how to get his girlfriend to sleep with him for the first time. He sees in Adam a fellow lad, a football fan, an experienced man of the world who might help. Which Adam happily does. They conceive an elaborate plan to create the right circumstances for David and Karen to get it together, but somehow it all goes wrong. David's anger abates later however when he finds Karen more than willing. Adam is his hero.

Finally the eldest sister Alice, who is both perceptive and unhappily married, realises that there is more to Adam than meets the eye.

Synopsis

Adam's camp; Steve's camp. Dinner sets things straight, naturally.

Synopsis

Vicky Young is a successful young model, suffering from the insecurities of fame and fortune.

At the height of her career, she is on the slippery slope to self-destruction, thanks to peer pressure, drink and drugs.

Invited to launch a new line of lingerie in South Africa, she falls further out of control and clashes with her manager, Josh Sinclair.

Unable to deal with the demands of her job or her feelings for Josh, whom she knows she is letting down, she decides in desperation, and against all advice, to take time out by driving across country to her next photo shoot.

Unused to driving in such a strange, hostile environment, Vicky crashes her vehicle, way out in the middle of the bush.

Vicky's struggle to survive in the truly wild landscape of Africa mirrors the jungle that is civilisation and, in surviving, she is able to rediscover her values.

Edinburgh - NBX review:

Greg Wise, Elizabeth Berkley and Patrick Bergin star alongside South African actress Dorette Potgieter in the story of a fashion model's struggle to survive in the African bush. Fast slipping into a life of drugs and drink and repeatedly clashing with her manager (Wise), Vicky Young (Potgieter) decides to take some time out from her schedule and drive by herself to the location of her next shoot. An accident leaves her stranded in the remote African landscape and she has to pit her wits against the forces of nature to survive.

The film was shot over six weeks in a private game reserve near Johannesburg. 'The biggest challenge was filming the animals,' says writer-director Paul Matthews. "We had everything - rhinos, lions, elephants - and they weren't just in background shots. We had scenes of our lead actress up a tree surrounded by lions, being chased by a lion, being harassed by hyenas, and working very close to a herd of elephants, which anyone who has been near elephants knows is quite hair-raising. It really required a lot from her. And getting those kind of shots on such a tight schedule was very demanding."

The film is produced by Peakviewing, which recently laid out its film-making ambitions by setting up a theatrical distribution company headed by industry veteran Martin Myers. The company plans to make up to six features a year and will launch with the £12m Merlin 2000, a CG-heavy family adventure starring Rik Mayall, Tia Carrere, Patrick Bergin, Adrian Paul and Craig Sheffer, which was also written and directed by Matthews.

Synopsis

The Emperor Akbar breeds animals in captivity, to honour his first born son. His unsettled cheetah fails to breed. Akbar experiments with the enclosures he has built for his collection in order to induce the cheetahs to mate. After many frustrated attempts, Akbar gains a greater understanding.