Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table and a high school he can attend for more than part of the year. As the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, stability is hard to find. Hoping for a new start they move to Portland, Oregon where Charley takes a summer job, with a washed-up horse trainer, and befriends a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete.
Adapted from Willy Vlautin’s acclaimed novel 'Lean on Pete'.
SL original entry
Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2017 - In Competition - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Special Presentations
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Official Competition
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018

Synopsis

Inspired by true events, 'Woman Walks Ahead' follows Catherine Weldon, a widowed artist from New York in the 1880s, who travelled to North Dakota to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull. Catherine and Sitting Bull, each broken in their own way, come to recognize their mutual strength. Soon, the wider political struggle for Native American land rights influences their friendship, and they overcome personal adversity to fight against the US government’s takeover of the Plains Indians’ lands.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Gala Presentations - World premiere

Synopsis

In a small island community, a troubled young woman falls for a mysterious outsider who empowers her to escape her oppressive family. When he comes under suspicion for a series of brutal murders, she defends him at all costs and learns what she is capable of.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Platform - World premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - First Feature Competition
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2018 - Spotlight
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018

Synopsis

On Christmas Eve, 1968, in a Scottish coastal town, a debt collector goes to work to avoid confronting his wife’s worsening psychosis at home.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - World premiere

Synopsis

The story of the playful, but passionate relationship between Peter Turner, a young British actor, and the eccentric Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame (who rose to fame in the 1940s) in her later years.
What starts as a vibrant affair between a legendary femme fatale and her young lover, quickly grows into a deeper relationship, with Turner being the one person she allows herself to turn to for comfort and strength. But, their passion and lust for life is ultimately tested to the limits by events beyond their control.
Based on the memoir by British actor Peter Turner.
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018

Synopsis

As her marriage to Jack founders, eminent High Court judge Fiona Maye has a life-changing decision to make. Should she force a teenage boy, Adam, to have the blood transfusion that will save his life? Her visit to his hospital bedside has a profound impact on them both, stirring strong new emotions in the boy and long-buried feelings in her.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Special Presentations - World premiere

Synopsis

For six years, Europe was plagued by a devastating virus that transformed humans into zombie-like monsters. As mankind struggled to control the pandemic, the great hope of a cure was found.
Senan has been through hell. When the plague swept across Ireland he was among the thousands afflicted and rendered into rabid ghouls. Senan did horrible things he cannot forget — and neither can the public, nor the authorities charged with policing those released from captivity. Senan's sister-in-law Abbie, however, is willing to give him a second chance. She lets him live with her and her young son, believing that Senan's actions while infected were beyond his control. But as an angry anti-cured movement burgeons in tandem with an increasingly radicalized pro-cured movement, Abbie is forced to question just how far her trust should be pushed.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Cult Strand

Synopsis

Behind any great man, there’s always a greater woman...
Joan Castleman (Glenn Close): a still-striking beauty with impeccable credentials, the perfect alpha wife. Forty years spent sacrificing her own talent, dreams and ambitions to fan the flames of her charismatic husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) and his skyrocketing literary career. Ignoring his infidelities and excuses because of his “art” with grace and humour.
Their fateful pact has built a marriage upon uneven compromises. And Joan’s reached her breaking point. On the eve of Joe’s Nobel Prize for Literature, the normally shy Joan is pushed uncomfortably into the spotlight, where long-kept secrets are in danger of being illuminated.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Gala Presentations - World premiere

Synopsis

As devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, sisters Alex and Luisa and their mother, Ivanna, are united in The Truth. Alex looks up to her confident older sister, while striving to follow in Ivanna’s footsteps as a ‘good Witness’. But when Luisa starts to question the advice of the Elders, she makes a life-altering transgression that threatens to expel her from the congregation. Unless Ivanna and Alex can persuade her to return, they must shun her completely. This challenge becomes more painful when their family is faced with another heartbreaking test of faith.
Written and directed by Daniel Kokotajlo, a former Jehovah’s Witness, 'Apostasy' is a remarkable and authentic debut film, providing rare insight into the complex nature of faith, family, duty and love.

Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - World Premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - First Feature Competition

Synopsis

“CLAPTON IS GOD”. With these words graffitied across London, Eric Clapton became the ultimate guitar hero. He is the only ever three-time-inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an 18-time Grammy Award-winner, and widely renowned as one of the greatest performers of all time. But behind the scenes lay restlessness and tragedy. The insatiable search to grow his artistic voice left fans surprised as he constantly quit successful bands, from the groundbreaking Yardbirds to 1960s super-group Cream. His isolated pursuit of his craft, and fear of selling out, served as a catalyst for his evolution as an artist.
Stretching from his traumatic childhood living in a “house of secrets”, to his long and difficult struggle with drugs and alcohol, and the tragic loss of his son in a heart-breaking accident, Eric Clapton always found an inner strength and healing in music. Told through his own words and songs, as well as those of his family, friends, musical collaborators, contemporaries and many heroes – including BB King, Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - TIFF Docs - World premiere

Synopsis

Ines and Emilie, two estranged sisters travel through Europe towards a mystery destination. Over a few short days they are forced together to sift through seismic changes in their lives. Ines is the extrovert, a photographer who lives in New York; Emilie, the introvert, has asked her sister to join her on a mystery trip. As the two drive into the wooded European countryside and reach their destination, it gradually dawns on Ines why she has been asked to accompany her sister. Horrified at first, she fights to understand her sister's intentions as the two women confront their unsettled past and, more importantly, their future.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Platform - World premiere

Synopsis

Life is not easy for our young Barbara Thorson. Defiant, precocious, outspoken, and a loner, Barbara relates more to the make-believe world of Dungeons & Dragons. At home, she makes life difficult for her older sister, Karen, who is responsible for taking care of her and her brother. At school, psychologist Mrs. Mollé takes an interest in Barbara's increasingly worrisome behaviour. As she deals with loss and bullying, Barbara's imagined life begins spilling into her real one and she becomes obsessed with what she sees as her quest: killing giants. It's only when she's forced to face the truth and overcome her fears that Barbara is able to confront her demons.
Based on the Man of Action Graphic Novel 'I Kill Giants' created by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Discovery and TIFF Kids - World premiere