Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

Drawing on artist Imran Perretta’s own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage THE DESTRUCTORS explores personal and collective experiences of marginalisation and oppression. Shot in Tower Hamlets, East London, it reconsiders the figure of alienated male youth, exploring the complexities of ‘coming of age’ for young Muslim men living in the UK. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future

Synopsis

Forget Safety. Live Where you Fear to Live. Destroy Your Reputation. Be Notorious. A love story about identity and place in a post Brexit Europe. Koffee, an African migrant, and Fanny, a French waitress are two lost souls who attempt to find home in one another and escape the labels that inevitably leave them homeless. True freedom is never by permission. To love who you want, to live where you will, to be who you are, is to finally be free.

Synopsis

As the glinting steel and mirror-glass skyscrapers of London’s financial hub edge ever closer, the area surrounding Hoxton Street has been transformed by hyper-gentrification and sky-high property prices. A traditional East London street less than a mile from the City of London – it is now the last bastion of the areas disadvantaged – a concentration of the aged, poor and dispossessed. Hoxton Street’s close-knit working-class community has absorbed waves of immigrants since the 1950s. But as traditional industry has withered, the latest influx of young urban hipsters followed closely by expensive restaurants, digital media start-ups and corporate property developers has brought a deepening sense of inequality. Sensing they have been left out of the changes swirling around them, the street’s ageing white residents, who lament the loss of their jobs and former ways of life, mirror the 52% of Britons who voted to leave the EU. Focusing on one street and its inhabitants over a four-year period, and set against the upheavals of rapid gentrification, years of austerity, the fallout from Grenfell and the eruption of Brexit, the film offers a revealing portrait of life in London today. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Debate Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

No road. No voice. No future. Deep in the jungle a road is quietly destroying a protected rainforest, causing conflict and fear. Yet for some indigenous communities, desperate for change, it brings the promise of a better life… but at what cost?

Synopsis

Executive Producer Fernando Meirelles (Academy Award-nominated director of "City of God") and Malian musician Inna Modja take us on an epic journey along Africa's Great Green Wall - an ambitious vision to grow an 8000km ‘wall of trees’ stretching across the entire continent to fight back against desertification, climate change and migration. Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2019 - World premiere

Synopsis

Billie Holiday one ofthe greatest voices of all time, a woman of breath-taking talent and globalpopularity, was throughout her short life a figure of controversy - a blackwoman in a white man’s world, a victim and a rebel whose performances and recordings of the protest song "Strange Fruit" earned her powerful enemies. She was also an enigma, her telling of her own life story a mix of half truths and free-form improvisations. In the late1960s journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biographyof Billie. Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer’s short, tumultuous life. Raw, emotional and brutally honest, these incredible testimonies ranged from musical greats like Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie to her cousin, schoolfriends, lovers, lawyers, pimps and even the FBI agents who arrested her. But Linda’s book was never finished and the tapes unplayed – until now. With unprecedented and exclusive access to Linda's astonishing 200 hours of never-before-heard interviews, BILLIE showcases an American legend, capturing her depths andcomplexity through the voices of those who knew her best. Painstakingly restored with footage and stills colourized by one of the leading colour artists, it is an arresting and powerful tale of one of the greatest singers who ever lived, and of Linda Lipnack Kuehl, the woman who would sacrifice her life intrying to tell it. Official Selection Telluride Film Festival 2019 - World premiere

Synopsis

An ambitious young FBI Agent is assigned to investigate iconic actress Jean Seberg when she becomes embroiled in the tumultuous civil rights movement in late 1960s Los Angeles, California. Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2019 - Out of Competition - World premiere Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Special Presentations

Synopsis

To be a moffie is to be weak, effeminate, illegal. The year is 1981 and South Africa’s white minority government is embroiled in a conflict on the southern Angolan border. Like all white boys over the age of 16, Nicholas Van der Swart must complete two years of compulsory military service to defend the Apartheid regime. The threat of communism and “die swart gevaar” (the so-called black danger) is at an all-time high. But that’s not the only danger Nicholas faces. He must survive the brutality of the army – something that becomes even more difficult when a connection is sparked between him and a fellow recruit. Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2019 - Orizzonti - World premiere Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Official Competition

Synopsis

30-something, self-help addict, Lou Farnt wants nothing more than to escape her overly controlling mother and the dead-end seaside town where she grew up. So when strange and strikingly confident new life coach Val invites Lou on a road trip of alternative therapies, Lou finds the perfect opportunity to leave, and the perfect person to become. Unfortunately for Lou, Val’s a serial killer.

Synopsis

Oscar-winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s revelatory CITIZEN K is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident. Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2019 - Out of Competition - World premiere Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Contemporary World Cinema

Synopsis

A portrait of the struggles and triumphs of Australian footballer Adam Goodes - a hero on and off the field, as both a decorated sportsman and an indigenous-rights activist. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - TIFF Docs - International premiere

Synopsis

A depiction of the everyday lives of the residents of Gascoigne Estate in Barking, East London, up to the demolition of the building.