The Agent

Director: Lesley Manning

Year: 2019

Russia 1988. Telepathic twin brothers are chosen for a secret experiment to test ESP. Peter is isolated in a remote military station whilst Viktor is launched into space. The twins become mentally and emotionally close, until Peter intuits a dark secret his brother has kept from him. He abandons the mission. Alone, Viktor faces death in deepest space. Peter races back to save his brother. As Viktor drifts further into space, with light years between them, the brothers heal their bitterness and again become one.

Director: Lesley Manning

Year: 2000

P.O.V. is a love story about a documentary film maker (Harry) making a docu-soap in a supermarket. The drama centres around Harry's efforts to get two of the young workers together romantically to create a love interest within his film - only to discover that he is falling in love with the girl himself.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> The style of the piece will be a positive message, warm hearted love story.

Director: Lesley Manning

Year: 2000

Plenty of beginner film-makers take the micro-budget digital video approach as the only way they can afford to make their first feature. But P.O.V. is a little different: it is the brainchild of established TV director Lesley Manning and writer Andy Walker, each with a string of TV and animation credits. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Manning took her inspiration from the Dogme 95 initiative. She had already experimented with blurring the boundaries of documentary and fiction, notably in her TV film Ghostwatch, which drew the highest audience in 10 years for a BBC single drama and now has its own fan website. P.O.V. builds on this approach, taking as its starting point the making of a docusoap. Documentary-maker Harry is trying to create a storyline for his supermarket documentary by kindling a romance between two of the staff only to find himself falling for one of them.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Manning drew on her extensive contacts within the industry to recruit upcoming and experienced talent for cast and crew who would work for love and deferred fees. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Supermarket chain Somerfield let Manning shoot in one of its branches, while all other locations were within a small area to keep costs down, and passers-by were roped in to serve as extras. Real ingenuity went into stretching the tiny budget, with a wheelchair used to move the camera for tracking shots and most post-production being done in facilities houses' downtime - what Manning calls "working down the seams of the industry".