Projects matching: ISO

Synopsis

Erik Knudsen's latest feature film is about identical teenage twin girls, one of whom has cancer, who escape their stifling middle-class home life in search of their natural father, whom they have not seen since infancy. Their adventure, fuelled by a unique spiritual bond and aspiration, leads them through a northern British city during one night, in which they experience, through episodic encounters and events, the underbelly of their society. One final major obstacle tests their faith and resolve, and leads to fundamental change for both of them. This is an intimate and intense story taking us into the alienation of two teenage girls caught between conflicting values and allegiances.

Synopsis

Grace and Violet, ethereal and eccentric sisters, live in the middle of nowhere, shadowed by the eerie phantoms of their younger selves. Brought up in isolation in an attempt by their father to incite heightened creative and telepathic abilities, the sisters are linked together in an almost supernatural way.

As a dare the two sisters bring a man into their dysfunctional home, a good-looking drifter named Luke, who has no idea what is in store for him: more of a trick than a treat. Slowly he is drawn further and further into a devastating ménage à trois. To Grace and Violet it is simply a game, but the game of chance has increasingly higher stakes as Violet breaks the rules and falls desperately in love, threatening the sisters' unity.

As Violet and Luke grow closer, the bonds that have tied the sisters together for so many years are slowly being torn apart and the pain of this betrayal drives Grace to despair. As she begins to lose her mind she creates a chain of events that endangers not only the experiment but also their lives.

Synopsis

When Alex begrudgingly decides to pick up Vivienne, a young and feisty hitchhiker, little does he know that his world is about to be turned upside down. During the journey a logging truck hits them and Vivienne is killed. Devastated by the accident, Alex visits Vivienne's mother Linda, only to discover that she is autistic with little understanding of what has happened.

Alex feels compelled to stay with Linda and help with the funeral arrangements. He tries his best to be understanding of Linda's obsessive-compulsive nature, but can't help but find her behaviour frustrating.

While staying with Linda he begins an affair with her neighbour Maggie, much to the unhappiness of Clyde, a local policeman who has a crush on her. Clyde discovers that Alex recently left prison after being convicted for killing a man and immediately tells Maggie, but this doesn't dissuade her from her new and passionate liaison.
Alex slowly begins to understand and care for Linda, but as the funeral approaches the dark secrets of Alex's past emerge. With the help of Maggie's understanding and Linda's unique window into the world he manages to open his eyes to his past, enabling him to confront both the sadness and anger that have built up within him.

Snowcake is an emotionally powerful drama about learning to deal with the past, taking hold of the present and looking to the future.

Synopsis

While filming a horror movie, renowned director Boris Arkadin mixes reality with fiction until the two become blurred beyond recognition.

Synopsis

Swimmer is an unflinching and revelatory look at adolescent sexual obsession at its most dark and disturbing. This shattering drama opens with a prologue from the protagonist, a 14-year-old boy, revealing his undeclared crush on a woman twice his age and a harrowing determination to make her his own. When he fails to approach her, he seethes with frustrated desires.

What follows is an uncompromising portrait of the struggles of a former potential Olympic swimming champion who now lives a reclusive life cloistered in her flat next to the boy's.

He, unseen, patiently observing, becomes obsessed with the swimmer, provoking perverted sexual fantasies that lead to intense behaviour within him, bordering on the misogynistic. He ultimately turns her already troubled life upside down when their paths accidentally cross. The boy manipulates his way into her heart. Both are emotionally fragile and fetishes abound in the teenager's mind. It isn't long before his desires become inexorable and he sets out to destroy what he can't have, leading to an explosive, nail-biting climax.

Synopsis

The All Together stars Martin Freeman (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Office) as Chris – a frustrated, over-worked and under-paid television producer who is desperately seeking a new home, career, girlfriend and best friend. Having arranged for several local estate agents to come and value his house which he reluctantly shares with his free-loader flatmate Bob (Velibor Topic – Kingdom of Heaven, Snatch), Chris is unexpectedly called in to work, forcing him to leave Bob in charge of showing the agents around the property. Bob promises Chris that when the doorbell rings, he’s going to open it and invite anyone he sees standing there inside. For once, Bob resolves not to fail his only friend. Understandably, when Chris returns later that evening with a colleague - arrogant television presenter Jerry Davies (Richard Harrington – Rehab, Spooks) - he is quite surprised to find a deeply disorientated American gangster holding his flatmate, four estate agents, two Jehovah’s Witnesses and a terrified children’s entertainer captive in the kitchen. It’s at this point that things start to get a bit strange.

Synopsis

Based on Alan Bennett's hit National Theatre comedy-drama. An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in 1980s Yorkshire are in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at Oxford or Cambridge. A maverick English teacher, a facts-orientated history teacher and a young and shrewd supply teacher are trying to help them, albeit with completely different teaching methods. The school is run by a slightly crazed headmaster obsessed with results and getting his school up the league tables. Given all this, can the boys achieve their Oxbridge goal and what can they learn about life, love, history, and film-endings along the way?

Synopsis

The Jigsaw of Life is an emotional thriller, exploring love, friendship, betrayal, anger, vengeance and enlightenment. The film is set over the course of Duncan's life. His childhood is shown from the arrival of his stepfather, Michael. Duncan's mother, Faye, inadvertently allows them to get trapped in a suffocating atmosphere that slowly poisons them. We see how the young Duncan deals with the situation at home and how it changes him and shapes him for later life. Duncan then moves away to university, where he experiences happiness for the first time, and falls in love with Clara. A close betrayal by his so-called friend, Keith, then starts a chain reaction that leads to him quitting university and losing all direction. Duncan has made a great friend at university, Lee, who sticks with him through thick and thin, as Duncan tries to find some understanding and reasoning in the world. He then meets Pete, who suggests the concept of the jigsaw of life, and this helps Duncan move on and look to the future. Duncan eventually comes face to face with Keith again, and their ultimate confrontation sparks the final climactic scenes.

Synopsis

The setting is Lancashire in 1932. Albert Pierrepoint, in his early 30s, a local delivery truck driver, arrives home one day to a letter sent to him ‘On Her Majesty's Service'. He has been accepted for training at Pentonville Prison, to honour the Pierrepoint name and become a British executioner, following in the footsteps of both his father and uncle. Despite his proud excitement, his mother Mary disapproves and tells him exactly what she told his father; she never wants to hear, see, nor speak of it.

The opportunity is a dream come true for Albert and he makes the trip to London. The journey marks the beginning of the incredible career of the world's most famous executioner, who will one day officiate at the hangings of some of Britain's most notorious murderers including John George Haigh, the acid bath murderer, and Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Synopsis

Rome, 476 AD. The Roman Empire is under threat. A mighty force for almost 500 years, at its height Rome’s power spread from Mesopotamia in the east to the Iberian peninsula in the west, from the Rhine and Danube in the north to Egypt in the south. This story follows the events surrounding the historical capture of Romulus Augustus and his imprisonment on the island of Capri.

Synopsis

The Lives of the Saints is a dark and bizarre morality tale.

The story unfolds in the cafés, clubs and shops of Green Lanes, where Mr Karva is the boss: a ridiculous yet dangerous man. Othello, his stepson, is the young pretender, palling around with his girlfriend Tina and his weak-willed lackey Emilio. Life revolves around socialising, gambling and trying to scrape a modest living.

But that lifestyle is about to be thrown into disarray by an otherworldly, sickly-looking 10-year- old child. Mr Karva's errand boy, Roadrunner, stumbles across the child in the park and offloads the bizarre find into Othello's basement.

Thus begins an exhilaratingly strange series of events. It seems that the child is able to grant others their innermost desires... Soon Othello's dreams of limitless wealth are becoming reality. And true to form, his tyrannical stepfather wants to muscle in on the action.

It's Paradise on the streets of north London, but family ties and relationships are becoming increasingly strained and as Mr Karva himself says, 'every Paradise got its serpent'. He persuades the unstable Emilio to take the matter into his own hands, and the tale plummets towards its tragic conclusion.

The Lives of the Saints is a truly original, modern-day fable, which warns that what we wish for is not always what we need.

Synopsis

A mysterious call, a photograph of a man and a private detective compelled by the one case that has finally got to him. One stark but brilliant day in London, Austin Peterson takes a job from an anonymous client, a demand he knows he should refuse. He uses the feelings of the woman who loves him to get information. But this only raises more questions than it answers, leading Peterson deeper into the maze. He discovers that the man in the photograph committed suicide four years before, and haunted by the unanswered questions, he subjects the dead man's family and friends to his investigation.