BFI Flare x BAFTA's Edward Cripps

LITTLE DID SCREENWRITER EDWARD CRIPPS KNOW THAT A TINY SUGGESTION MADE AT A BAFTA EVENT WOULD BE LIFE-CHANGING.

It was while attending a round table with a big Hollywood writer, organised as part of BFI NETWORK x BAFTA Crew, the development programme for emerging and mid-level creatives, that Edward Cripps asked if it would be possible to do something similar with a British creative who was closer to their entry level. BAFTA subsequently arranged a round table with Charlie Covell, the former BAFTA Breakthrough (2015) who had just been nominated for writing The End of the F•••ing World (2017). “Charlie was very kind and candid and we kept in touch afterwards,” he says.

Edward (centre) at a BFI Flare x BAFTA mentoring lunch

BAFTA/Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi

Skip forward to 2019 and things had taken a downturn – Edward was ushering in a cinema in order to make ends meet. However, his writer aspirations remained and he had been accepted for BFI Flare x BAFTA, a more intimate offshoot of Crew that supports LGBTQIA+ filmmakers. As part of the initiative, recipients get to choose a mentor and at the top of Edward’s list was Charlie.

“She very kindly agreed,” he notes. “I’d written a sample script and it just happened to be in a similar genre to her next project, Kaos. She liked the script and so did the producers, so I pitched some storylines and wrote some sample scenes... When she called to say I’d gotten the job to join the writers’ room, I was on my shift at the cinema. I just went into the toilets and cried.”

Edward now has two projects in development, one with Two Brothers Pictures and the other with Objective Fiction, as well as a film treatment (“a queer coming-of-age vampire flick”), currently in the process of applying for funding.

At a BFI Flare x BAFTA mentoring lunch with filmmaker Isabel Sandoval (third from right)

BAFTA/Alecsandra Raluca Dragoi

"I can trace it all back to Crew,” Edward states. “It’s really changed my life, especially the Flare scheme. It’s given me a huge confidence boost... The dream is to have my own project with its own writers’ room, but right now I’m focused on getting more experience and credits and working with people I can learn from.”

Read the full interview: bafta.org/about/awards-brochures