Project Detail

Scheme Birds

Synopsis

As her childhood turns into motherhood, teenage troublemaker Gemma comes of age in her fading Scottish steel town. But in a place where “you either get knocked up or locked up,” innocent games can easily turn into serious crime.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2019 - Documentary Competition - World premiere
Winner: Best Documentary Feature Award; Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award, Tribeca Film Festival 2019
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 – The Changing Face of Europe

Details

Year
2019
Type of project
Features
Running time
90 min
Director
Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin
Producer
Mario Adamson, Ruth Reid
Editor
Hanna Lejonqvist SFK
Screenwriter
Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin
Director of Photography
Ellinor Hallin

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

UK, Sweden co-production

Gid Films (UK), Sisyfos Film Production (SE)

Sales Company

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Smiling man facing camera with a group of people in nun costumes and Outrage placards behind Queer Edward II

Director: Theo Rollason

Year: 2026

Spring 1991: queer life is under renewed attack in Britain, and filmmaker Derek Jarman is adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II into a radical protest film. Drawing on extraordinary never-before-seen footage shot by Seamus McGarvey on Jarman’s set, QUEER EDWARD 11 is about the refusal to separate art from life, politics from pleasure. Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2026 Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Young man with dark hair and black jacket stands with his eyes closed in a field of common reed. Between Us and the World

Director: Wallace Minchong Li

Year: 2026

European archival footage from the 1950s documents the life of indigenous, nomadic Sahrawi children and youth in Western Sahara / Morocco. Seventy years later, local young people from Laayoune (El Aaiún) revisit locations that may have appeared in the footage. From ocean to desert to oasis, under trembling starlight, they share their thoughts on life, dreams, and utopia as they search for an uncertain upstream. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026

Oliver Cromwell death mask:  The death mask of Oliver Cromwell, from the British Museum collection, displayed in a rectangular wooden case. Landscapes of Shame

Director: Patrick Hough

Year: 2026

Filmmaker Patrick Hough journeys through the haunted landscapes of Ireland, where colonial violence, ecological loss and queer desire remain inscribed in the land. Moving between forests, mountains, archives and cruising grounds, the film traces the extinction of the Irish grey wolf alongside the cultural suppression that followed Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Fragments of history surface through objects and places: a death mask of Oliver Cromwell, medieval myths of werewolves, maps drawn to measure and divide conquered territory, and landscapes where wolves were once hunted to disappearance. These materials are interwoven with contemporary nocturnal scenes of queer gathering and protest, where shame gives way to transformation, pleasure and resistance. Blending essay film, documentary and poetic fiction, LANDSCAPES OF SHAME asks how violence survives in landscapes, language and bodies - and what forms of wildness still remain. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2026