Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

From Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning writer and director of The English Patient, comes this unique adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's classic thriller.





To be young and rich in sun-drenched Italy. That's the life Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) craves - and Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) leads. A young man with no direction of his own, Ripley has been commissioned by Dickie's wealthy father to journey to Italy and persuade the prodigal playboy to return home to America.





However, on arrival Ripley is instantly captivated with Dickie's charmed existence: the Amalfi villa, the jaunts to Rome, the first class hotels, and the beautiful expatriate (Gwyneth Paltrow) who completes the triangle. Dickie is amused by his new acquaintance - never suspecting the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make this lifestyle his own.

Synopsis

'One man's decent through Dr Rex Otto's infamous rules'.

Synopsis

To eleven year old Taliesin Jones, God is as palpable as the apple he buys on his way to school, as real as the rain which trickles down his neck, as near as the warts on his fingertips. In Cqmglum where he lives on a farm in rural Wales, God is all around, even at school where Hoop The Mental hits him on the nose, and earthy Julie Dyer blows confusing smoke rings at him.


Others don't see the world the way he does. When his mother leaves home with her hairdresser to put more colour in her life, Taliesin is left behind with his distracted father, sullenly adolescent brother and his own creeping uncertainty to try and make sense of this sudden conspiracy of events. It is only with elderly Billy Evans, piano teacher and part time healer that Taliesin finds a source of miracles, miracles which transform his life . . .


The Testimony of Taliesin Jones is a beautifully measured story exploring the troubled borderland between childhood and adolescence. Poetic, precisely observed and filled with humour, it examines the resources of imagination and faith to which children can turn when faced with the confusion and imperfection of the adult world they are about to enter.

Synopsis

When Tal Jones' mother leaves home to live with her hairdresser, the 12-year-old boy is left to deal with his uncommunicative father (Jonathan Pryce) and bitter older brother (Matthew Rhys), as well as all the other problems of growing up in a Welsh farming community, such as bullying, piano lessons and warts.



The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones takes an unexpected turn, when Tal finds out his elderly piano teacher Billy Evans (Ian Bannen, in one of his last roles before his death last year) is a faith healer. Billy heals Tal's warts, inspiring him to form his own gang, the Believers, who land in trouble when they try to cure a school mate with diabetes. The result is a story about God, belief and miracles.



Based on Welsh writer Rhidian Brook's first novel, which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1997 and was shortlisted for Welsh Novel of the Year, the material had particular appeal for director Martin Duffy, who had worked with healer Finbarr Nolan on his autobiography Seventh Son Of A



Seventh Son.



Unknown actor John-Paul Macleod was chosen from hundreds of hopefuls for the title role.



Duffy's first feature, The Boy From Mercury, won several awards, including three of the main prizes at the Giffoni children's film festival in Italy. His next film is The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, starring Elijah Wood and Janeane Garofalo. The Testimony Of Taliesin Jones had its first screening in the Cannes market in May.

Synopsis

Shaun Mosley's The Three Kings is based on one of the most famous stories in the world - the journey of the three magi to Bethlehem to honour the birth of Jesus Christ.



Paul Freeman, Neran Persaud and Kwame Kwei Armah star as the three wise men, while Ron Moody, best known as Fagin in the film Oliver, is the evil Herod and Vanessa Redgrave a high priestess.



Mosley, whose debut film was Alec, spent several years researching his film and then teamed up with Rod Turner, a producer whose previous two films, Let's Stick Together and Intimate With A Stranger, earned him the reputation of someone who made films that made decent returns for their backers. Turner then scanned actors' directory Spotlight for the faces to fit the characters and struck lucky - apart from Freeman, Redgrave and Moody, he also cast rising star Sienna Guillory as the European magi's daughter who, after the death of her brother, accompanies her father on his travels.



With the budget raised from a number of private backers, filming began in late summer last year in Tunisia.



The film recently premiered at the Emden Film Festival in Germany and Turner hopes to see it at key UK festivals in the autumn.

Synopsis

After 1997's Strong Language, The Truth Game is the second film in writer-director-producer Simon Rumley's trilogy about young people living in London. It takes that most mundane of social gatherings -- the dinner party for six old friends -- and turns it into a tale of secrets and lies that soon spiral out of control.



"The film is an investigation into what truth really is and whether or not it matters in society today," says Rumley. "I've always found it very interesting that the truth is something we're told should be adhered to but in fact the pillars of society who tell us to be truthful are actually the ones who are being



anything but.



"Writing and directing it the way I have means I'm saying, 'Look, here's a bunch of people and they're all getting on with each other but they're also all lying to each other'. The audience is the omniscient, all-seeing eye."



Strong Language, released in the UK earlier this year to critical plaudits, was, in fact, the second instalment but was rushed into production when financing for the first film, Club Le Monde, fell through.



Rumley kept the budget of his follow-up, The Truth Game, low, aware of the pitfalls of aiming too high with a second film. He teamed up with Piers Jackson, who financed it through his Screen Production Associates. Shooting began in October last year, with a large Georgian house in London the sole location.



Rumley is now on the verge of signing a distribution deal for the UK, something he was keen to do before taking the film abroad. "The support you get from a UK distributor can boost its chances internationally," he says.

Synopsis

A black comedy of hilarious proportion about two pensioners who embark on a Thelma And Louise-style adventure in crimplene slacks.

Synopsis

An aged landlord is persuaded by a foreign student to let her an apartment that has been locked since the death of the previous tennant years earlier, with terrifying consequences for the girl.

Synopsis

The Valley is a journey deep into the killing fields of Kosovo, at the height of the carnage in September 1998 - months before NATO bombs fell. Uniquely, The Valley views the conflict from both sides, through the eyes of men and women trapped in Kosovo's bloodiest combat zone : the Drenica ('Dre-nee-tsa') Valley.

Synopsis

Life, love and everything via a transatlantic phone call.

Synopsis

Keen flyer Nigel Horne met ex-fighter pilot Rami Dvir when he was flying at Hull airport and discovered they had another interest in common -- film-making.



Horne was writing screenplays, while Dvir had already made a short, Memento Mori. The pair started developing ideas together and drew on their airborne experience to put on a one-act play about the disappearance of a jet at the Bristol Old Vic drama school.



The play, Broken Skies, developed into a screenplay, which the two are currently trying to get off the ground. In the meantime, Horne began work on a film that was less ambitious, budget-wise. He came up with a story set around a pub crawl and the result is The Wedding Tackle, a comedy love story set over the course of an all-day stag party.



Reluctant groom Hal (James Purefoy), his bride-to-be Vinni (Susan Vidler) and their friends get caught up in a series of schemes when Hal has a change of heart. Adrian Dunbar plays swimming coach Mr Mac, recruited by Hal to seduce his fiancee and give him an excuse to call the wedding off, while Tony Slattery is Hal's sexually frustrated cartoonist friend Little Ted, who himself has a crush on Vinni. Providing the soundtrack are British hits from the 1960s.



Dvir and Horne are developing two other scripts besides air drama Broken Skies: a thriller called Bloodstone and a road movie, E Is For England, which is being co-produced with Dreamwords-Foxxy Films. The Wedding Tackle is released in the UK on August 11 through Ratpack Films.

Synopsis

Hal, an oversexed photographer, has a problem. He is due to marry Vinni in one weeks time and he's got cold feet. In fact, he's got frostbite. His friend, Little Ted, a scheming, sexually frustrated cartoonist is obsessed with Vinni, even though he dumped her when they went out together. Both Little Ted and Hal have their own plans to disrupt the imminent wedding and they separately call upon Mr. Mac, a world weary swimming coach, to help them out.





On Hal's all day stag night, Little Ted sets in motion a disastrous chain of events when he persuades Mr. Mac to convince Petula, (his ex-girlfriend) to seduce Hal in a pub lavatory so that he can record it on Polaroid. Hal, the meantime, wants Mr. Mac to seduce Vinni so that he can catch them in flagrante, giving him the excuse to call off the wedding.





Meanwhile, Vinni has decided that she has no intention of marrying Hal and gate-crashes the pub crawl in order to finally have things out with him. In this Machiavellian comedy of errors, there is no saying who will end up with whom.