Projects matching: Just

Synopsis

Like Father portrays a family in crisis, focusing on the dislocations of grandfather, father and son.

Pigeon man Arthur Elliott, a seventy-year-old whose working life in the pit gave him a strong sense of identity and pride, is losing his allotment to the local authority's coastal redevelopment scheme.

Working as a trumpet player, a teacher and a club singer, running an agency for club acts, Joe Elliott, forty-years old, an ex-miner, can just about scrape a living out of his music, but he is losing his wife.

Ten year old Michael Elliott, living with the pit village folklore and the wreckage of the coal industry is left to grapple with his own realities. Each of the three generations is struggling to come to terms with the past and find the ties that bind them.

The three separate, but essentially integrated worlds unfold against the rich and extraordinary backdrop of East Durham landscapes and locations. Development of the film began in 1998, its dramatic content originating from actual lives and the unfolding of real events. Incorporating documentary situations, the film features strong performances from both professional and non-professional actors alike. Strongly committed to nurturing latent natural talent, Amber took the bold step of casting local people with no previous acting experience in each of the three main roles: Ned Kelly as Arthur, Joe Armstrong as Joe and Jonathan Dent as Michael. Joe Armstrong, himself an ex-miner, wrote the brass band suite which features in the film as a commission for his character Joe Elliott.

Synopsis

Brendan, a porter at the Dublin Medical College, is plagued with financial strains and a gamblers' sordid past. Not only has he let down his wife, but also his daughter who desperately wants to go to university. However, never one to crumble, Brendon has a plan. He has found a 'golden goose' - an object with a hidden talent sequestered deep within the archives of the college which may provide the Midas touch Brendon so needs. This source has an uncanny knack for picking the winning horse at the local races.

Needless to say, Brendan and his colleagues intend to exploit this 'talent' to its fullest - risking everything on their ability to outwit the local bookies and other, rather more unexpected, obstacles. They are, quite literally, betting their futures 'On The Nose'. In a race against time they need just one last win to set themselves up - before the inevitable happens and their chance of happiness is snatched away from them forever.

Synopsis

When misanthrope Russell Square falls under a tube train he imagines his troubles are over. However when he finds he has fallen out of reality into a nowhere called The Gap, inhabited by an angel called Islington, he realises his troubles are just beginning.

Synopsis

In the middle of nowhere, Joe's mobile rings, a voice tells him to look in the back of his car.

It's just the beginning of a nightmare of no escape - and what he discovers in the forest across the dark waters of the lake will change his life forever.

Synopsis

A poetic look at the tragic events during a night-time shift of two Asian-Briton doctors.

Synopsis

Think you know the London club scene?

Think again.

Justin Dawson is twenty-six and a successful London lawyer. He lives in a spectacular bachelor pad and has a beautiful girlfriend. Carl is Justin's twenty-four year old brother. He's a downtrodden Scunthorpe lawyer and he lives in a terraced house with his mother. When Justin dies in a tragic accident, Carl travels down to London to collect his brother's belongings. Leaving his mother and grey, mundane life behind, Carl finds he likes the thrills, the pretty girls and the London life that his brother had.

Once he digs deeper into his brother's affairs, Carl discovers a side to Justin, far from the affluent corporate lawyer he secretly envied. After meeting Justin's eclectic mix of friends, Carl's eyes are opened to the club scene that his brother was very much a part of. Sunny, Justin's beautiful, classy girlfriend, also discovers a hedonistic side to his life that she never figured in.

Carl and Sunny grow closer and together they share memories of Justin and his pipe dream of getting away from it all. When Tiffany, a tough but troubled ex-model, arrives on the scene, she seems to know more about Justin that she's letting on. Tiffany lives with the sinister and totally eccentric Damian, who runs the raves and supplies the drugs - the drugs that Tiffany uses to tempt Carl away from Sunny.

Damian is the arch manipulator and is only interested in masterminding Tiffany's seduction of Carl and his own seduction of Sunny. Tiffany is soon revealed as a pawn in Damian's game. As they're drawn into a dangerous underground web of blackmail and deceit, Carl and Sunny realise they're in too deep and Carl is forced to question how far his perfect brother was involved and whether his death was really an accident.

Synopsis

A mini cab appears and Alistair assumes that his disaster of an evening is over - only to discover that it is just beginning.

Synopsis

Gary and Tom have been friends since birth. They have many shared experiences and developed similar outlooks on the world. A world, which they feel, is quick to reject anything that does not appear to fit in. A superficial world. Gary and Tom feel they are misfits because they have no desire to conform.

At college together, studying courses that they have long lost their enthusiasm for, on the last day of the autumn term, 6 months before their final exams, they decide to leave it all behind.

However taking advantage of their media studies course they record their last day for prosperity. Intending to repay the cruel instigators of their often humiliating time spend studying, they line up a dazzling array of practical jokes, pranks and wind-ups.

Attempting to conceal their actions and avoid the attention of a potentially violent gang of "popular" students proves just a little bit too much, with disturbing consequences, ensuring that their last day leads to "The Big Finish" that they weren't exactly looking for.

Synopsis

In this new film, starring Lee Evans and Kathy Burke, the Martyns, to outsiders, are the kind of people that you'd cross the road to avoid, but though they're the family from hell, once you get to know them you can't help but love them.

Robert Martyn (Lee Evans), an unemployed but optimistic loser, lives with his adoring and long-suffering wife Angie (Kathy Burke). They have two children - Katie, their heavily pregnant fourteen year-old daughter, and angelic Little Bob, their eight year old son who worships his Dad.

Everyday he wakes up thinking that things will turn out better for him and his family, and that one day he'll win one of the competitions he's always entering. All he wants to do is give his wife and kids everything they really deserve.

When Robert discovers that yet again he hasn't won the 'Dream Holiday' of a lifetime, a competition in his local newspaper, he finally snaps. He decides to take the law into his own hands; if he can't win a holiday, he'll just have to steal one!

Synopsis

Three years ago, Lawrence Ledbetter, a brilliant, but crooked accountant had a get-rich-quick plan that needed a run-down town and a set of corrupt local businessmen and officials. One day he walked into Weyback.

Every phase of the town's regeneration scheme made The Fellowship, as Lawrence called the Weyback fraudsters, richer and were soon laundering Russian Mafia money, Then, Lawrence left town with half The Fellowship's and all of the Russians money.

Now Lawrence is back in town and with the Fraud Squad circling, the Russians wanting their money and The Fellowship's new leader wishing the obvious imposter dead. He just about manages to keep one step ahead, surviving car-crushing plants, deep river mud, shoot-outs and strangulation. He finds comfort with a night club chanteuse but then finds himself on the wrong end of her gun when the wedding in the bedding goes badly. Led to him by a crazy ex KGB mole and armature ballon strangler, the Russian hit man and his rubber-suited female colleague, Lawrence finally realises what must be done and enlists them in the dead of night under Weyback's new motorway, to serve justice so Lawrence can once again leave Weyback for good.

Synopsis

An action film set in Britain's vicious gangster underworld. It's a tale of friendship against adversity. The story begins with the killing of Lloyd's younger DJ brother, Tom, at the hands of Dodge. We follow Lloyd's search for justice.

As the story untangles we are introduced to Mel and Colleen, desperate petty thieves who work for Dodge in his nightclub and are forced to stay by an ever-increasing debt to him for living expenses and Colleen's crack habit.

It's not long before they are given an ultimatum: find the money or turn tricks for Dodge. Mel plots their escape. She vows to get enough cash to get away and get Colleen cleaned up. They manage to escape with the club's takings. Hot footed they are pursued by Dodge. Desperate, they make their way to the rooftop where they manage to elude him.

Mel and Colleen are on the run in Margate where they find work on the seafront spinning candyfloss .

It's not long before Colleen's obsession with thieving draws the two back to London. Dodge finally catches up with them on the streets around King's Cross.

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.