Projects

Synopsis

After instigating the largest of leak of secrets in US history - when she disclosed 750,000 documents to Wikileaks - ex-soldier and trans woman Chelsea Manning was supposed to spend most of the rest of her life behind bars in an all-male military prison. But on January 17 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence, in an unprecedented and controversial move that divided the United States and the world. XY CHELSEA follows Chelsea Manning as she leaves prison after seven years inside, and begins a new life, whilst at the same time having to deal with the far-reaching consequences of her past - the historic leaks that lead to her prison sentences, the unintended celebrity status that is thrust on her as one of the world’s most notorious whistleblowers, and transitioning to become the woman she has always known herself to be. An intimate character portrait of a fascinating, unique and complex woman, a true rebel and outsider, who after making history must now start a new life, in a world which is far from welcoming, and in the shadow of rising Nationalism and intolerance, which has fomented hate and division throughout America. Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2019 - Movies Plus - World premiere Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - Special Presentations

Synopsis

Since the high school and the fish farm closed, the men and teenagers have had to leave the small northern British island of Out Skerries for Shetland’s mainland. Julie is one of the women left on the island with her youngest children. In her empty house prey to the sea winds, daily life follows a strange timescale, at the rhythm of the activities of those who left. Official Selection Visions du Réel 2019 - International Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

What is it like to grow up in a place that has been forgotten? Tyler, a 16-year-old boy who has never attended school, guides us through an estate in the north of England. Official Selection Visions du Réel 2019 - World premiere Official Selection Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival - International Competition

Synopsis

Iceland is a country marked by its frozen nature and extreme temperatures, which give it a certain touristic appeal. The harshness of the climatic conditions and the enthusiasm of tourists regularly cause car accidents to happen. From this phenomenon, verging on absurdity, the artist and filmmaker Ruaidhri Ryan had planned to make a road movie, one that he will never finish. He thus adventures into the different phases of pre-production, production and post-production of what this film could have been. This film captures the hilarious diary of this failure, in which Ryan calls on a 4x4, a GPS gnawed by the cold, an elf and a Viking guide with whom he maintains a virtual correspondence. Moving between simulated reality, video games and cinema, the film explores the geography of a country marked by the exoticism of its landscapes, often used as backdrops for Hollywood movies. A hilarious look at the way in which new technologies condition our ways of representing territories. Official Selection Visions du Réel 2019 - International Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

An intimate journey in the life of a modern feminist who has never stopped being a hopeless romantic. A reflection on the nature of love, sex, relationships, and gender roles for a generation that having freed itself from the chains of tradition, is still struggling to find a new way to organise their lives. Official Selection Visions du Réel 2019 - World premiere

Synopsis

When a fun-loving, middle-aged single mum accidentally gets pregnant from a one-night-stand, her prim teenage daughter is scandalized. But mother and daughter slowly reverse roles as the pregnancy progresses. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Discovery - International premiere

Synopsis

What if the actors sack the production team and make the film themselves? What could possibly go wrong? When student film maker Peter arrives at his first Acting on Impulse workshop to document this year's project for a Univerity assignment, he finds a full-scale revolution on his hands. The actors want to run their own show but can't agree on the genre. With more ideas than skill, rehearsals soon slide into chaos and the shoot itself looks ominously unlikely to happen. Can they find a way to see past their differences and put aside any insecurities to ensure Acting on Impulse has a film to screen?

Synopsis

ABDUCTION is a story of Kevin a broken man who lost his son Harvey 5 years ago under mysterious circumstances, along with 5 other children from the same area. Then more recently lost his loving wife Lindsey who had turn to alcohol after the disappearance of their only child. Lindsey had asked Harvey to get some wood from the log storage box from in the garden when he vanished and never forgave herself. Now 2019, Kevin hears a knock on the back door to his shock it's Harvey he looks exactly the same as the night he vanished wearing the same clothes. The other children also appear from where they were last seen and not one of them has any recollection of where they've been for the past 5 years. To him it seems like just a couple of minutes have past. Back in 2014 when the children disappeared a paedophile that had been rehabilitated into the village community without the locals knowledge but when they community finds out they start a witch hunt to find him. The police are under pressure from the local community arrest and charge him with the kidnapping and murders of all the children. Kevin along with the other parents is interviewed and recalls the events of the night Harvey vanished telling the reporter what his wife witnessed that night and to the day she died talked about bright blue lights in the nights sky which nobody believed. The children are returned to their families to try and rebuild their life's in the community of Baildon but strange things start to happen the children display special abilities people start vanishing without a trace.

Synopsis

Estranged from his daughter and cut out by his father, Mike uses drugs as a doorway to escape from his painfully numbing thoughts while his brother tries to fix the pieces.

Synopsis

The story of Diva – a fading superstar preparing for a comeback performance at the 2065 'eSports Olympics' – and Geo, an AI with artistic yearnings. Set in a smoke-and-mirrors realm of fantastical architecture, sentient drones and snow-deluged jungles, AIDOL revolves around the long and complex struggle between humanity and Artificial Intelligence. Fame – in all its allure and emptiness – is set against the bigger contradictions of a post-AI world, a world where originality is sometimes no more than an algorithmic trick and where machines have the capacity for love and suffering. Contemporary anxieties and fixations – the rise of AI, the formulaic dictates of celebrity, the hegemony of technological giants – are refracted through a quixotic prism. AIDOL is accompanied by a score composed and orchestrated by the artist.

Synopsis

A film location finder is shown around a repossessed, crumbling French château. Over the course of the afternoon, he slowly falls for both the place and the owner’s flirtatious representative, as she recounts the story of a famous book set there. But is their present-tense connection for real, or just a projection of the book’s 17th Century characters?

Synopsis

A nightmarish contemporary vision. Two adult sisters exist dysfunctionally, each limited by illnesses affecting both body and mind – one physically and the other psychologically. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Cult Strand - World premiere