British Council Logo UK Films Database
Project Detail

The Pit and the Pendulum: A Study in Torture

Synopsis

An ordinary man is arrested in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Suspected of terrorism, he is held for 'enhanced interrogation'. Alone in the dark, he hallucinates a series of psychological tortures. When he is rescued we discover the real brutality that he has been subjected to.
Visit Film Website

Details

Year
2013
Type of project
Shorts
Running time
15 mins
Format
Digital
Director
Fiona Bavinton
Producer
Clare Cahill, Patricia Rybarczyk, Fiona Bavinton
Executive Producer
Fiona Bavinton
Screenwriter
Fiona Bavinton
Director of Photography
Dawid Pietkiewicz
Sound
Alistair Locke
Composer
Doug Berwick
Principal cast
Stephen Marcus, Paul McGann, Jeffery Kissoon, Nicholas Farrell
Additional photography
Paul Jenkins

Genre

Horror Human Rights Literary Adaptation Woman Director Drama Fantasy Sci-Fi

Categories

Fiction

Production Status

Post-production

Production Company

Compos Mentis Productions Ltd

W: www.composmentis.com
E: enquiries@composmentis.com

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.

Suggest amendments

See also

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

Je ne regrette rien Je ne regrette rien

Director: Fiona Bavinton

Year: 2020

Made entirely in Unreal, during lockdown in the UK, in a week in which VE day celebrations collided with Black Lives Matter protests, this film questions the persistence of nostalgia as a form of social control.

Experimental Human Rights Woman Director
Galicia! Galicia!

Director: Anna Maguire, Kyle Greenberg

Year: 2026

What if you went on a holiday and the apocalypse happened? GALICIA! is a found-footage, hybrid-documentary following a couple through home video footage as they visit their friends at a winery in rural Spain and inadvertently capture the end of days. We live in a time where the sense of our impending mutually assured destruction is more real than it’s ever been. GALICIA! Takes the form of a holiday video - a document of a couple before - and after the great cataclysm. The film starts as something that feels unedited - an accidental video diary of an ordinary couple that feels somewhat ghostly as much as it is also pedestrian. As the film evolves and degrades, we are led to question the fragility of humanity, as well as its power to endure.

Adventure Biography Climate / Environment Comedy Docufiction
Animation image of two characters (Death and Little Death) standing on a cliff. A Little Death

Director: Leto Meade, Jonathan Rockefeller

Year: 2026

Death’s patience is tested as his sweet and gentle apprentice appears incapable of the task, leading him to seek professional help from the most unlikely of places. Official Selection Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2026

Adventure Comedy Fantasy Horror Literary Adaptation