Projects with status: Complete

Synopsis

Bad Hair Day? You Don't Know The Half Of It!

Have you ever wondered how it is that even the finest haircut can go from Barbie to bird's nest in the space of a few days? Martin Cosgrave has. He's an investigative journalist who thinks he's exposed a conspiracy used by the hairdressing trade to exploit unsuspecting customers for centuries.

Gaining the trust of industry insiders, he discovers their trade secret: a haircut which looks fantastic for a few days, then quickly deteriorates, forcing the customer to return for further grooming.

But while he is looking into this, Martin makes an even more astounding discovery. There is a second secret haircut, The Haircutter's Cut, which those in the know can obtain by making a secret sign.

Martin makes it his mission to track down The Haircutter's Cut, and a hair-raising undercover investigation ensues.

Synopsis

A plucky recruit is beckoned to town by the promise of opportunity, but he first must acquire the proper attire.

His endeavours are met with a curious blend of diversion and trickery.
 

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

Set in the mid-1970s The Illiterate is the story of Fidel, a young boy growing up in a hippy commune who suffers from acute dyslexia. Alienated from school and his abusive teachers Fidel retreats into his own dark and violent fantasy world. Only when a woman living in the commune takes on the job of teaching him to read does Fidel's life begin to change and a whole new world of possibilities begin to open up.

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

What better time for a robbery than under the fog of war!

In a daring attempt to end the war by Christmas, the British High Command hatch an extraordinary plan - Operation Market Garden. 35,000 troops are dropped behind enemy lines in German-occupied Holland. In the midst of the largest airborne invasion in history, one small unit of men, codenamed 'Matchbox', has its own hidden agenda. When Matchbox are shot down short of their landing zone, the odds of their success seem hopeless. Seven very different British soldiers find themselves separated from the Allied invasion, on a collision course with three renegade German soldiers who want to lay claim to the hoard.

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

In an incredible twist of fate, a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world’s most barbaric figures: Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). Impressed by Dr. Garrigan’s brazen attitude in a moment of crisis, the newly self-appointed Ugandan President Amin hand picks him as his personal physician and closest confidante. Though Garrigan is at first flattered and fascinated by his new position, he soon awakens to Amin’s savagery - and his own complicity in it. Horror and betrayal ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs and escape Uganda alive.

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

When Martha's boyfriend Alex dies after an argument, she's left grief-stricken and pondering whether, if they'd started afresh, the relationship could have worked out differently. A few days later, she's woken from a deep sleep by a late-night television documentary and gets the chance to find out the answer to that very question.

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

The kelpie is a legendary beast from Scottish mythology that, in the guise of a horse, drags unwary people to their death in the loch.

Ewan is a young boy in the Highlands who decides to vanquish the kelpie, in a terrifying encounter that challenges his resolve.