Screen Stars of Tomorrow 2014

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Stars of Tomorrow 2014

UK Stars of

TOMORROW 2014

Screen introduces the hottest acting and film-making talent

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INTRODUCTION

LIFE STORIES Cover shot by Yves Salmon at 3 Mills Studios, featuring Taron Egerton, Sam Keeley and Olivia Cooke.

UK office MBI, Zetland House 5-25 Scrutton Street, London EC2A 4HJ Tel: +44 (0) 20 3033 4267 US office 8581 Santa Monica Blvd, #707, West Hollywood, CA 90069 E-mail: firstname.lastname@screendaily.com (unless stated) Editorial Stars of Tomorrow editor Fionnuala Halligan, halliganfinn@gmail.com Editor Wendy Mitchell +44 (0) 20 3033 2816 US editor Jeremy Kay +1 310 922 5908 jeremykay67@gmail.com News editor Michael Rosser +44 (0) 20 3033 2720 Chief critic and reviews editor Mark Adams +44 (0) 20 3033 4213 Group head of production and art Mark Mowbray +44 (0) 20 3033 2817 Group art director, MBI Peter Gingell +44 (0) 20 3033 4203 peter.gingell@mb-insight.com Chief reporter Andreas Wiseman +44 (0) 20 3033 2848 Asia editor Liz Shackleton, lizshackleton@gmail.com Contributing editors Sarah Cooper, Leon Forde, John Hazelton, Louise Tutt Contributing reporter Ian Sandwell Advertising and publishing Commercial director Andrew Dixon +44 (0) 20 3033 2928 Sales manager Scott Benfold +44 (0) 20 3638 5050 Sales manager Nadia Romdhani (maternity leave) UK, South Africa, Middle East Andrew Dixon +44 (0) 20 3033 2928 France, Spain, Portugal, Latin America, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Scott Benfold +44 (0) 20 3638 5050 Germany, Scandinavia, Benelux, eastern Europe Gunter Zerbich +44 (0) 20 3033 2930 Italy, Asia, India Ingrid Hammond +39 05 7829 8768 ingridhammond@libero.it VP business development, North America Nigel Daly +1 323 654 2301 / 213 447 5120 nigeldalymail@gmail.com Production manager Jonathon Cooke +44 (0) 20 3033 4296 jonathon.cooke@mb-insight.com Group commercial director, MBI Alison Pitchford +44 (0) 20 3033 2949 alison.pitchford@mb-insight.com Subscription customer services +44 (0) 1604 828 706 help@subscribe.screendaily.com Festival and events manager Mai Le +44 (0) 20 3033 2950 mai.le@mb-insight.com Sales administrator Justyna Zieba +44 (0) 20 3033 2694 justyna.zieba@mb-insight.com Chief executive, MBI Conor Dignam +44 (0) 20 3033 2717 conor.dignam@mb-insight.com Screen International is part of Media Business Insight Ltd (MBI), also publisher of Broadcast and shots

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T

he stories behind this year’s Stars are as compelling as the tales they tell on screen: the 26-year-old pulling pints at night in Soho while writing her sci-fi script for Hollywood; the doctor whose family tragedy compelled him to write; the girl whose first acting experience was on HBO’s hit Game Of Thrones; the young man whose pranks on YouTube led to feature roles.

Remember those stories, and remember the faces on the next 20 pages — there’s no doubt you’ll be seeing more of these talents in the future.

This year marks 11 years of Screen’s UK Stars of Tomorrow, and it’s great fun to look back and see which of those rising stars have gone stratospheric — Benedict Cumberbatch, James McAvoy, Robert Pattinson, Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Emily Blunt to name just a few. This marks our first year including talents from Ireland in this feature; the country is such a hotbed of creativity that it seems overdue.

I’m also proud we recognise several behind-the-camera talents beyond writers and directors; in this class we have several heads of department who are building strong careers.

Huge kudos again goes to Stars curator Fionnuala Halligan, who studies hundreds of proposed talents to select the very best to showcase to the industry. Suffice to say that with her dealings with agents, casting directors, producers, publicists and creatives themselves, she is digging through thousands of e-mails and making hundreds of phone calls to bring this feature to life every year, and she does a remarkable job at picking the right Stars for Screen.

Creating this feature is one of the highlights of our year. We love being able to play a small part in helping grow the careers of this class of Stars. It will be inspiring to see where s they go next. We knew them when… ■ WENDY MITCHELL EDITOR

Stars curated and all profiles by Fionnuala Halligan. Photography by Yves Salmon, assisted by Rocio Chacon and Vanessa Short.

Additional photography by Polskey (page 25). With thanks to 3 Mills Studios, London, for hosting the photoshoot. Make-up by Cher Webb and Claire Mulleady for MAC. Lighting by Bowens International. Furniture from Eka at Pictures & Light, London.

02-11 ACTORS

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Jack Lowden, Jamie Blackley, Sophie Cookson, Mia Goth, Calvin Demba, Maisie Williams, Callum Turner, Eleanor Tomlinson, Aimeé-Ffion Edwards, Edward Holcroft, McKell David, Taron Egerton, Kate Phillips, Kevin Guthrie, Olivia Cooke, Aisling Franciosi, Sam Keeley

12

12-21 DIRECTORS, WRITERS & PRODUCERS Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Simon Stephenson, Roberto Oliveri, Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan and Marlon Smith, Lynsey Miller, Sarah Brocklehurst, Keri Collins, Michael Berliner, Dawn King, Mark Halsall and Simon Halsall, Chris Foggin, Aneil Karia, Krysty WilsonCairns

22-23 HEADS OF DEPARTMENT

22

Si Bell, Laura Tarrant-Brown, Rose Wicksteed

24-25 ONE-TO ONE Lynsey Miller talks to Amma Asante

26-29 ONE-TO ONE Aneil Karia talks to Hossein Amini

24

Sponsored by

30-32 WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

26

The class of 2013

Supported by

With thanks to

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 1

STARS OF TOMORROW ACTORS

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From left Jack Lowden, Jamie Blackley, Sophie Cookson

Jack Lowden Although he has been tied to several long-running theatre gigs since leaving college, Jack Lowden has already made a serious impression for a 23 year old. The actor won an Olivier award in April (“quite cool,” he says bashfully) for his role in Almeida Theatre’s revival of Ibsen’s Ghosts, a role that also netted him the Ian Charleson Award in May. His brief flashes onscreen herald greater things to come in film, however. First, in Sky’s The Tunnel (a remake of The Bridge), where he played the key tragic role of Stephen Dillane’s son, and then in Yann Demange’s ’71, both shot last year.

Lowden, who hails from Oxton in the Scottish Borders and comes from a “non-arty” home (although his brother dances with the Royal Swedish Ballet), left the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire, a year early in 2011 to join an international touring production of Black Watch. This was quickly followed by the role of Eric Liddell in the stage adaptation of Chariots Of Fire, another long-running production.

Now he is free for more film and TV work: next up for Lowden is the part of Thomas Wyatt in Peter Kosminsky’s production of Wolf Hall for the BBC (opposite Mark Rylance), followed by a small part in Joe Wright’s Pan. He has also just landed one of the two leads in The Passing Bells, a five-part First World War series for BBC One written

by Tony Jordan.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” he admits. “I take it seriously but I know how lucky I am to be doing it.”

Contact John Grant, Conway van Gelder Grant

john@conwayvg.co.uk

Jamie Blackley At 22, Jamie Blackley says he is “still nervous, still hungry and learning as I go”. The south London native is waiting for his first studio lead to be released — opposite Chloe Grace Moretz in an adaptation of the bestselling young adult novel If I Stay, set for an August release through Warner Bros/MGM. It is Blackley’s second leading role, however, following on from the indie Uwantme2killhim? and some plum supporting parts in And While We Were Here and The Fifth Estate.

Born in the Isle of Man, Blackley moved to Bromley, south London, as an infant and attended Sylvia Young Thea-

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tre School for six years. “I was a kid who wanted to be in show business,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what area, all I knew was that I really enjoyed it.”

Although he planned to go on to drama school, Blackley got his first job at the age of 17 “and I just rolled with it”. He knows, though, that “there are periods where you’re not in work and it’s tough.

Two years ago I was going through my room trying desperately to find anything to sell on eBay.” With indie feature Kids In Love also shot and awaiting release, that’s clearly no longer the case.

“I want to create longevity and in order to do that I have to be careful,” says Blackley. “I’m in it to do work that I would enjoy watching. I’m not looking for an overnight thing that puts me in a magazine.”

Contact Kirk Whelan-Foran, United Agents

kwhelan-foran@

unitedagents.co.uk

Sophie Cookson “I was still at drama school this time last year!” exclaims 24-year-old Sophie Cookson. “It’s quite bizarre.” Cookson beat hundreds of contenders in an agonising casting process to win the female lead in Matthew Vaughn’s upcoming Kingsman: The Secret Service opposite fellow Star of Tomorrow Taron Egerton. The film, by the way, very much leaves the door open to a sequel and possible franchise. Cookson had previously shot the Sky mini-series Moonfleet with Aneurin Barnard and Ray Winstone, so she wasn’t a complete newcomer on set.

Always keen on performing as a child, Cookson was in a drama company that toured Japan, but attempted to put acting on the back burner to go to university and study history of art and Arabic.

“I was trying to be sensible but I didn’t last long,” she says. “I left. I decided life is too short not to try. You have to take it seriously and I do — it’s my job.”

She attended the Oxford School of Drama, graduating in 2013, and is now focused on “making the right choices”, she says. “If I had to cite anyone as inspirations, it would be Lesley Manville and Lindsay Duncan. They have longevity; they’ve made good choices and they know what they want to do. A mix of theatre, film and TV is what I’m aiming for, but let’s see what happens.”

Contact Oriana Elia, Curtis Brown oriana@curtisbrown.co.uk

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 3

STARS OF TOMORROW ACTORS

Mia Goth Mia Goth has an otherworldly presence onscreen, an unusual aura that sets her apart. She is different off-screen as well, perhaps due to her exotic background, a mix of Canadian and Brazilian heritage and a childhood spent travelling the world (her middle name is Gypsy).

Discovered in Catford, south London,

by Storm Models when she was 13, Goth signed with an acting agent at the age of 15 (she is now 20) and her first role was as Charlotte Gainsbourg’s protégé P in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, followed up by an arresting turn in The Tunnel, Sky’s remake of The Bridge. “I moved to Brazil when I was little. My grandmother [Maria Gladys] is an actress over there and she would take me on sets, so that’s where it all started. I then went to Canada — when I was in year five, I was in seven different schools — and it was only when I was 12 that I settled down in London.”

Goth has just come off Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest, in which she plays the daughter of Josh Brolin and Robin Wright. (“It’s a very sweet story and so cool to play a Texan, you don’t have to do too much when you have that kind of tool.”) Next up is Stephen Fingleton’s The Survivalist, planned for a summer shoot in Northern Ireland. “At the end of the day you have to enjoy what you’re working on, you have to dedicate yourself all the way to it, and if it’s not a passion project there’s no point to it,” she says, before adding simply: “I’ve never felt happier.”

From left Mia Goth, Calvin Demba, Maisie Williams, Callum Turner

Contact Sarah Spear, Grace Clissold, Curtis Brown

spearclissoldoffice@

curtisbrown.co.uk

Calvin Demba “I’m waiting for my luck to run out, to be honest,” says 20-year-old East Ender Calvin Demba. There’s no sign of that.

Demba started acting classes at the Limehouse youth theatre Half Moon at the age of 16, but he was also boxing at his local gym (“I thought that was going to be my way out of the East End, to be honest.”)

His mum stepped in, applying to an agency on his behalf, and “I started to audition”, he recalls. “When I got my first job I thought, ‘This is something I can get my teeth into.’ I’ve been lucky and any opportunities I’ve been given, I’ve taken.”

They include the lead role in the hit Channel 4 youth drama Youngers, and a showstopping turn in the award-winning play Routes at London’s Royal Court Theatre,

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which “opened a lot of doors”. Rufus Norris came calling, and has Demba in the big-screen adaptation of the National Theatre’s hit show London Road, opposite Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy.

“The fact I’m in the room with these people shows I’m doing something right,” says the engaging Demba. “It’s not that I’m totally insecure but I’m aware I’ve had no formal training so getting parts like this gives me confidence.”

Demba has just shot an episode of Danny Boyle’s series Babylon for director Jon S Baird and is clearly an actor on the rise.

“I’d love to keep going with this. It’s very early in my career, in my opinion I’ve not done anything really too special and I don’t feel I’ve proved enough to myself yet,” he says. “I have a lot more to give.”

Contact Christina Cooke, Gordon and French co.uk

christina@gordonandfrench.

Maisie Williams The youngest Game Of Thrones star — and likely the last to feature in Stars of Tomorrow — Maisie Williams has just turned 17 and marked the occasion with two significant moves: getting her driving licence and completing a lead role in UK independent film The Falling, directed by Carol Morley (Dreams Of A Life). The BBC Films/BFI-backed The Falling is set in an all-girls school in

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close with Sophie Turner, who plays her sister Sansa (although they don’t share any scenes). Working on The Falling, she says, “was nice to build a base of friends my own age in the industry as well. This is my future and it’s good to meet other people, similar ages to you, who have the same passions.”

Contact Louise Johnston, Louise Johnston Management

louise@

ljcasting.co.uk

Callum Turner

1969 Britain, a world away from Game Of Thrones, and Williams likes it that way. “She’s a very different character to what I would normally be associated with,” says the Bristol native. “Being a complete newcomer to acting through Game Of Thrones, I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can from other people and I really loved this opportunity.”

Cast in Game Of Thrones when she was just 12, Williams has become

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famous, especially in the US, due to the show’s devoted following — but she herself has grown more and more devoted to the craft of acting and determined to stay in the business. “I’m the youngest of four and my first words were ‘and me’ so that’s my character,” she says. “I’m grateful I was a show-off when I was little. I was in the right place at the right time when Nina Gold cast me, I had the right look for the role and I was similar

to Arya [Stark, the tomboy princess she plays]. Now I’ve grown into the role and I’ve learned a lot more about acting. I had to learn the hard way I guess but I’m grateful that people saw something in me. I don’t come from a world where opportunities like this happen and I’m going to make the most of it.”

Williams grew up in Somerset before joining the Game Of Thrones team. With only three young actors on the set, she is

When Callum Turner was cast by the 81-year-old John Boorman to play the lead in semi-autobiographical Queen And Country, “John told me this was going to be his last film and it was my first. It felt very special,” says the 24-year-old actor from Hammersmith, west London. “I wasn’t technically playing him but, in reality, I was. He told me a lot about his life that he never told anyone else, things he said not to tell anyone else. To have that trust from him, for him to share things with me on such a level — it’s a beautiful thing.”

Boorman’s follow-up to Hope And Glory shows the central character — played by Turner — completing National Service in a 1950s, ration-restricted Britain. While he was clearly too young to remember that time, or indeed Hope And Glory, which came out in 1989, Turner’s mother did, and the film was one of the things they shared growing up. “I was a working class kid, grew up on an estate — I learned more through films than I did through life itself,” he recalls.

Turner decided to go into acting at the age of 18, taking some courses and working as a model. He fronted Burberry’s campaign in 2011 in a series shot by Mario Testino. Cast in Boorman’s film back in 2012 (it struggled to close financing and eventually shot at the end of 2013), Turner worked with acting coaches and played some interesting roles on TV, in series such as Leaving and The Town. Since the beginning of the year, he has been shooting Eleven Film’s eightpart murder mystery Glue, written by Jack Thorne (Skins) and set for transmission on E4 in late 2014. In it, he plays the central role of a Romany gypsy. “In February I was scared of horses; by March I loved them,” he says. “By May I was in Cannes.

That’s what I love about acting. You never know what will happen next.”

Contact Olivia Woodward, Curtis Brown olivia@curtisbrown.co.uk

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 5

STARS OF TOMORROW ACTORS

From left Aimeé-Ffion Edwards, Edward Holcroft, McKell David

Eleanor Tomlinson

Eleanor Tomlinson “This whole industry is about snapping up the opportunities as they come,” says Eleanor Tomlinson, who is about to turn 22 on the set of the BBC’s highly anticipated remake of Poldark. Or you could make the opportunities for yourself — Tomlinson was initially asked to read for the role of Elizabeth but says that, clearly, “Demelza was the part, so I asked could I try for her.” She tried, and succeeded, and BBC One will transmit the six-part series in 2015 with Tomlinson starring opposite Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark; shooting will wrap for her in Bristol and Cornwall this September

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This iconic part caps a career that has been burning bright of late, but has not been without its ups and downs, even at the age of 22. Tomlinson beat stiff opposition to win the coveted lead part of Princess Isabelle in Bryan Singer’s Jack The Giant Slayer, but the film crashed and burned last year and so far Tomlinson is better known for her TV roles in The White Queen and Death Comes To Pemberley, although working in film is a goal.

Coming from a theatrical family — dad Malcolm Tomlinson is an actor and mother Judith Hibbert a singer — Tomlinson “finally” decided to become an actress at the age of 11 when she button-

holed her father’s agent and, she says, forced him to take her on. “I was pretty headstrong,” she admits. Tomlinson has worked almost consistently since then, starting with The Illusionist and Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging (in which she played Jas).

Given her family heritage, the one area Tomlinson is hesitant about is the stage, where she has seen her mother and brother, Ross, perform. “It’s terrifying, I’d consider getting some training if that came up,” she says.

Brought up in Beverley, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Tomlinson moved to London full time at the age of 18. Now,

she says, “the hardest thing for me is not working, getting yourself out of bed when you don’t know what your next job is.” That seems a distant prospect.

Contact Nicki van Gelder, Conway van Gelder Grant

nicki@conwayvg.co.uk

Aimeé-Ffion Edwards Aimeé-Ffion Edwards breathes pure warmth onto the screen, whether it be on the TV show Peaky Blinders (her role is considerably enhanced in the second series that has just finished shooting) or Sky’s Walking And Talking; on the stage, where she starred opposite Mark Rylance for three-and-a-half years in

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— he has just recorded tracks for Universal — Holcroft took part in some plays while at Oxford Brookes University and found himself addicted. Prophetically, “if there was a catalyst it was doing work experience at the Royal Court when I was 22, helping to build the set for Jerusalem. I was so blown away by Mark Rylance I remember saying to someone, ‘I want to do that.’” Now Rylance, as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, will prove to be his character’s nemesis.

Attracted to “gritty, intense characters”, Holcroft has signed with WME in the US and plans to “just crack on”.

“Once you get a job which is relatively significant in the industry, there tends to be a slight snowball effect and you have a newfound buzz, in a good way, and you start to enjoy it and relax a little bit, enjoy the part,” he says. “But nothing is a breeze in acting — you have to fight your corner.”

Contact Cordelia Keaney, Tavistock Wood

cordelia@tavistockwood.com

McKell David

Jerusalem; or the big screen, where she is currently making inroads, in particular with John Boorman’s Cannes selection Queen And Country. “I feel like it has been quite steady and every year something exciting happens, but it has been quite gradual,” says the 25-year-old actress from Newport, Wales.

Now based in London (“although I still call Wales home, to be honest”) Edwards attended a Welsh-language school as a child. “It was quite poor and there wasn’t enough money to put on dramas. I applied to the National Youth Theatre of Wales and had two summer courses.” This led to an acting agent in

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Wales and, almost immediately, the second series of cult TV show Skins (as Sketch), “and that was my way in, that’s how it started”.

Next up for Edwards is a role in the lavish BBC One adaptation of Wolf Hall — with Rylance as Thomas Cromwell — playing Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid” who prophesied against Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.

And after that? “I want to keep surprising people, really,” she says. “I’ve had some times where it’s been quiet so I’m ready to enjoy it while it lasts.”

Contact Sarah MacCormick, Curtis Brown maccormick@curtisbrown.co.uk

Edward Holcroft Although there are more than 120 speaking parts in the vast BBC production of Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall, directed by Peter Kosminsky, few of the choice parts were open to newcomers.

Chief among them is that of the hapless George Boleyn, brother to Claire Foy’s Anne. That role went to 26-year-old graduate of Central Saint Martins’ Drama Centre London, Edward Holcroft. It is his second star casting over the last year, having also landed a key role in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Initially set on becoming a musician

McKell David turned 17 on the day of the Stars of Tomorrow photoshoot in May, but sent out his calling card at the age of 12 when he started his own show on YouTube, The Adventures Of Lil Mckell. In this series of shorts that were shot by his dad, McKell plays a cheeky Harrow chap, pranking people on the street. “None of it was staged,” he says, “so it gave me a level of confidence and self-esteem.”

In person, however, this teenager is serious and quietly determined. He has shot three features that are awaiting release, ranging from the low-budget Don’t Grow Up, about a group of foster kids on an abandoned island; to comedy Legacy; and Montana in which he costars as the trainee to Lars Mikkelsen’s seasoned assassin. Throughout this burst of work, McKell finished his GCSEs and plans to continue at night school.

Equal parts Japanese, Barbadian, Italian and Liberian, David trained at agency IAG’s drama school and, he says, “I want to break the boundaries, try to break free a little — being considered black I’m looking to branch out and do things that aren’t typecast roles. Right now I’m waiting for my films to come out, strategising, planning ahead. It’s like a chess game. I love acting as a career and I know that it’s meant to be.”

Contact Ikki El-Amriti, Identity Agency Group

ikki@identityagencygroup.com

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 7

STARS OF TOMORROW ACTORS

Taron Egerton To put it in sporting terms, Taron Egerton (pronounced Edge-r-ton) is 2014’s man of the match, the name on every UK casting director’s hot young talent list. He nabbed the lead role of Eggsy in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service opposite Colin Firth, a part read for by almost every young actor in the UK. He then followed up with the role of Edward, the tragic brother of Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) in the First World War drama Testament Of Youth. A RADA graduate in 2012, Egerton’s first role was on stage in The Last Of The Haussmans at the National Theatre, followed by a deceptively quiet period in which he took a few small TV parts. Egerton was then cast in a plum role in Sky’s well-reviewed drama The Smoke: surprise that it wasn’t renewed was quickly followed by delight as Egerton became available and the rest, as they say, is history — or at least the beginnings of it.

Hailing from Wales, 24-year-old Egerton started out at Aberystwyth Arts Centre before progressing to RADA. Career-wise, he would like to mix it up (“I’d like to do a play right now, to be honest”), from the big Shakespearean roles to TV and film, to keep it fresh, he says. “The challenge is to let things play out as naturally as possible. I’ve never even been to America and I’d love to go but not necessarily to see casting directors. It will come naturally.”

From left Taron Egerton, Kate Phillips, Kevin Guthrie, Olivia Cooke

Contact Lindy King, Julia Charteris, United Agents

jcharteris@

unitedagents.co.uk

Kate Phillips Kate Phillips is shooting out of Guildhall and into one of the most sought-after roles in the UK this year — as Jane Seymour in the BBC One adaptation of Wolf Hall. She has set the casting world abuzz in the UK, and although fresh to the film industry, has put herself firmly on the list of actresses to watch. Not only is Wolf Hall her first role, it was also her first professional TV or film audition: she certainly nailed it. “This could be the highlight of my career,” she says, although that seems unlikely. Phillips has just turned 25 as she completes her MA at Guildhall, following her degree in theatre from Leeds University. “I knew what I wanted to do,” she says, and she certainly pursued it. It took Phillips two years to get into drama school after she finished university. As a child, she moved around

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a lot. “I grew up in Esher but left when I was 10 — we went to Nottingham, Bristol, south-west London, Surbiton, Leeds.

I moved around so much, when I did the school play, I was good at that and it made me feel like I belonged, and sparked why I continued to pursue it.”

Wolf Hall, she says, “feels huge, it feels massive. There’s so much going on.” As Seymour, she shares many scenes with Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell.

“The way he works and the energy he gives off, it’s really serious and at the same time it’s joyous,” she says. Wolf Hall

will wrap in August. “It’s this kind of work I want to be involved in… theatre and film and television. I’d be happy if I could carry on like this.”

Contact Will Hollinshead, Independent Talent

willhollinshead@

independenttalent.com

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between acting classes and football, opting eventually for youth theatre and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He left after being offered the role of Peter Pan in John Tiffany’s National Theatre of Scotland production.

“That was three years ago and I haven’t looked back since then,” he says. “I’ve worked hard and I guess that’s it — with a keen eye and focus you can decide what you want and go after it, but also with a bit of lady luck.”

Contact Lisa Gardner, Independent Talent

lisa@independenttalent.com

Olivia Cooke

Kevin Guthrie Born in Neilston near Glasgow, Kevin Guthrie’s career is on a clear trajectory.

Dexter Fletcher’s Sunshine On Leith proved a perfect showcase for this 25-year-old actor’s natural charm, now Terence Davies’ adaptation of Sunset

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Song will further demonstrate his range.

Currently shooting in Scotland with Guthrie as the romantic lead opposite Agyness Deyn, Sunset Song is Davies’ reworking of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic novel, set between 1912 and 1917.

“I’d read the novel already — the charac-

ters are historic, especially in Scotland,” recalls Guthrie. “So as soon as I heard it was being done, and Terence was involved, I was just desperate to be part of it. I was as prepared as I could possibly be for that audition!”

As a child, Guthrie split his free time

Olivia Cooke has been living out of a suitcase for two years. “I get home to Manchester and my mum goes mad at me, saying my room is a mess, but I say ‘Mum, everything I own in the world is in this room!’,” says the 20-year-old star of the critically acclaimed US series Bates Motel, now going into its third run for Universal. In her series downtime, Cooke has also shot Hammer horror The Quiet Ones with Sam Claflin, sci-fi thriller The Signal and supernatural adventure Ouija, which Universal will release in October. “I’m definitely going to try to move away from horror now,” she says with a laugh, as she prepares for the June shoot of Me & Earl & The Dying Girl opposite Thomas Mann for Indian Paintbrush.

The only daughter of a working-class single mother, Cooke attended the Oldham Theatre Workshop for eight hours a week as a child. When she landed the part of Christopher Eccleston’s daughter on short-lived TV series Blackout, he then suggested her for the BBC’s The Secret Of Crickley Hall, and within months she had won the key role in Bates Motel. By the age of 18 Cooke was living by herself in Vancouver, working on her American accent and trying to adapt. “I didn’t know anyone,” she recalls, “I didn’t have any money. It was a big reality check. My mum was nervous but no way was that going to stop me.”

It changed her life. “Bates Motel is such a critical success in the US, it has given me a classier profile,” she says. “It has allowed me to go up for roles I’d never have dreamed of. I’m just a girl from Manchester and I’m in a room with Oscar nominees waiting to audition.”

Contact Christina Shepherd, Shepherd Management

christina@

shepherdmanagement.co.uk

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 9

Calvary Irish Producer Octagon Films

Penny Dreadful Irish Co-producer Octagon Films

Ripper Street

Quirke

Irish Co-producer Element Pictures

Irish Producers Tyrone Productions & Element Pictures

Frank

Vikings

Irish Producer Element Pictures

Irish Producer World 2000 Entertainment

STARS OF TOMORROW ACTORS

From left Aisling Franciosi, Sam Keeley

Aisling Franciosi Like everyone else who watched TV series The Fall, casting director Kahleen Crawford’s eyes were drawn to Aisling Franciosi as the precocious teenage neighbour of the serial killer played by Jamie Dornan. Ultimately, it led her to cast the Dublin-born actress as a rebellious teenager in Ken Loach’s Cannes Competition title Jimmy’s Hall.

Franciosi, whose father is Italian and who speaks Italian, French and Spanish fluently enough to want to appear in films in all those countries, is the first Irish actress to appear in Stars of Tomorrow. Hailing from a family of academics, 22-year-old Franciosi studied French and Spanish at Trinity College, Dublin (juggling her course with theatre roles in the Irish capital), leaving in her fourth year for a role in the BBC One drama Quirke opposite Gabriel Byrne. “I knew always that acting was what I wanted to do,” she says. “I started drama class when I was

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about six years old and that’s when I said I wanted to be an actress. A lot of kids say that but for me I really did mean it. There have been days when I wonder what it’s like to not want to be an actor!”

Also trained as an opera singer, Franciosi is “all about the UK”, she says. But every time she buys her one-way ticket to London, she gets a job back in Ireland, culminating in the recent Belfast shoot for the second series of The Fall, in which her role is greatly enhanced. Her goal is to have “as varied a career as possible. If getting a bit better known allows you to work with and have access to people in the industry, then that’s what I want.”

Contact Jonathan Shankey, The Lisa Richards Agency

jonathan@

lisarichards.ie

Sam Keeley Sam Keeley got his break at an open casting call in his home town of Tullamore, County Offaly in southern Ireland, a

town not exactly known as being a hub for movie stars. That is the status Keeley is aiming for, however, and with the lead role in Monsters: The Dark Continent (directed and written by former Stars of Tomorrow Tom Green and Jay Basu) out in September, he may well succeed. He will follow that up with Ron Howard’s Heart Of The Sea, the true story behind Moby Dick, for which he shed a great deal of weight to play a starving sailor.

“I take physicality seriously; I like to change as much as I can within the limitations of time and scheduling,” he says.

Keeley has had some offers since Heart Of The Sea wrapped earlier this year, but he is taking a measured approach. It is a good time for the 23-year-old actor, who wanted to drop out of school and be a rock musician until his careers guidance officer persuaded him to take a look at acting. Keeley saw an ad in the local newspaper for Rebecca Daly’s art feature The Other Side Of Sleep, auditioned, got

the role, resigned his video-store day job, and ultimately went to Cannes. “That might have been a bit premature,” he laughs now, but he managed to parlay that into a small role in Misfits, directed

by Tom Green, which ultimately led back to Monsters: The Dark Continent. In between was a memorable part opposite Transformers: Age Of Extinction star-tobe Jack Reynor in Lenny Abrahamson’s feature What Richard Did. Still based in Dublin (“I’m pretty happy there and we’re making it work”), Keeley has an affable but extremely serious approach to his work. “My experience has been practical; I’ve digested the books and come up with my own method,” he says, “and I’m learning all the time. There’s some good work I’m involved with out there at the moment, and I’m waiting to hear back from, so I’m excited about the future.”

Contact Kate Buckley, 42 kate@42mp.com

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STARS OF TOMORROW DIRECTORS, WRITERS, pRODuCERS

Phoebe Waller-Bridge Actress, writer, theatre producer

“It’s been the maddest year imaginable,” says actress-writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

“Everything is swirling around at the same time, all the dogs are biting on my heels at once.” Now aged 28, Waller-Bridge went to RADA (“because acting always was, and still is, my main job”). However, after graduation, she says, “Nobody would touch me with a bargepole.” Until she met writerdirector Vicky Jones, that is, and they set up DryWrite to showcase young writing talent.

“She suggested I started writing and I’m so glad I did,” says Waller-Bridge, “because now it’s all coming together.” Her onewoman show Fleabag was a hit at Edinburgh last year and just sold out again at Soho Theatre in May. Funny, filthy, feminist and darker than you might expect, Fleabag has put Waller-Bridge on the radar.

The BBC commissioned a script adaptation of Fleabag as a half-hour series and she is writing the pilot, while Film4 stepped in with a first-look deal for a comedy film. She stars in two TV pilots that she hasn’t written, one shrouded in secrecy, the other for Hat Trick; and is doing the draft of the next St Trinian’s film for Ealing — “right up my street, about bad-ass girls causing havoc”.

“Everyone’s got their five minutes and I’ve gone and got mine now,” she says, rushing between jobs. “You really get the sense that you’re having a moment.”

Contact Alec Drysdale, Independent Talent alecdrysdale@independenttalent.com

Simon Stephenson Writer

Simon Stephenson is a man with his own rich back story. Now 35 years old, he is a doctor who worked in paediatrics at the Royal London Hospital until recently, when his Black List script Frisco was set up with independent Los Angeles producer Tom McNulty after a bidding war. Stephenson, who comes from Edinburgh, has always alternated medicine with writing, but the shocking loss of his brother a decade ago in the Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand changed the course of his life. He wrote about the experience in the moving book Let Not The Waves Of The Sea, which, he says, was a creative and emotional release.

“The book came out two years ago and that was the only thing I was writing and when it was done I had these stories to tell,” he says now. “On a practical side, it’s really hard if not impossible to combine a medical career with a screenwriting career and I’ve not worked in a hospital for 18 months.

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After the book came out I gave myself a year writing and I wrote five scripts, of which Frisco was only one. I locked myself in the British Library every day. It’s a great place for a writer, it’s like being back in university or in prison!”

Of the other four, Rovaniemi is being developed by Big Talk and BBC Films; The Nine Lives Of Louis Wain is with Joe Wright and Paul Webster’s Shoebox Films; while spec scripts Treasure and The Invernesian are close to being set up. Stephenson is also developing a pilot for Dan Fogelman and ABC Studios in Los Angeles. Perhaps understandably, there are no plans to return to medicine. “There are things I miss about it though,” he says. “It’s very social. And hard to find a job that’s more rewarding.”

From left Phoebe WallerBridge, Simon Stephenson, Roberto Oliveri

Contact Katie Langridge, Knight Hall Agency

katie@knighthallagency.com

Roberto Oliveri Writer-director

The least experienced of this year’s Stars of Tomorrow, 24-year-old Roberto Oliveri has just produced, written, shot and funded his first short, Compassion, while living with his parents in Hertfordshire and working in a garage to raise funds. Starring Diana Quick and Ricky Champ (cast brilliantly by Daniel Edwards), it is an assured debut from an untrained film-maker, shot in 35mm black and white, full of wide- and long-shots and suspenseful silences.

An Oxford English literature graduate, Oliveri has long been passionate about cinema as co-president of Oxford University Film Foundation, but it is a big step into production. “It was weird on the first day because I’ve such a theoretical knowledge of film, and I had to put it into practice,” says Oliveri, who produced Compassion through his own Visual Fare production company. “I had lots of help, lots of support, and NFTStrained DoP Beniamino Barrese who loved the script and the way I imagined it. And our budget I got from working allowed us to pay the crew, which was very important.”

Oliveri is working on a feature script (“a metaphysical thriller”) and another short.

Compassion is clearly influenced by Michael Haneke, but Oliveri says, “I wrote the script without too much thinking of other directors. I assume they were in there under the surface. I did it this way because of my desire to achieve what I want — it was a case of, this is what I want to do and I’m doing it my way, and I had freedom to do what I thought was right.”

Contact Roberto Oliveri roberto.oliveri@hotmail.co.uk

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STARS OF TOMORROW DIRECTORS, WRITERS, pRODuCERS

Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan and Marlon Smith Writers

From left Daniel FajemisinDuncan, Lynsey Miller, Sarah Brocklehurst, Marlon Smith

Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan and Marlon Smith won a Bafta shortly after being selected for Stars of Tomorrow: a television craft award for breakthrough talent for their gripping Channel 4 drama Run, which they co-wrote (they are in the throes of writing a second series). Both aged 33, they are also writing a “futuristic gladiator” feature for Vertigo called Gods Of War, which everyone involved with is very excited and hush-hush about.

Childhood friends who hail from south London, Fajemisin-Duncan and Smith are, they admit, in a “great place” right now. They are writing a three-part BBC series called The Gospel According To Cane, adapted from Courttia Newland’s book. They are also talking to Film4 about a feature.

And they deserve it all, having pooled their resources with director John Pearson to finance and shoot Run as a proposed internet drama before it was picked up elsewhere. “We always knew we wanted to do this, even when we had other jobs. But with Run we had our ducks in order and went for it 100%,” says Fajemisin-Duncan. “That kind of commitment, essentially your life has to change. You have to put everything aside if you want it.”

They have, he adds, the same instincts as writers. Fajemisin-Duncan says: “If there’s a fork in the road of the story, we could probably tell which direction we’d take; Marlon is a bit darker, gritty. I like that too, but maybe I have a tendency to go for bigger ideas.”

“Good content wins the day, essentially,” adds Smith. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned after years of trying to break in, it is that momentum is everything; once you’ve got it, you’ve got to run with it.”

Contact Jane Villiers, Sayle Screen jane@saylescreen.com

Lynsey Miller Writer-director

“I tend to fall in love with my characters,” says director Lynsey Miller. “And consequently whatever I do visually is motivated by them and what they’re thinking or feeling.” This passion has given rise to some arresting cinema in a series of short films, culminating in last year’s Colour, for Channel 4’s Coming Up scheme, and Lizard Girl for BBC/EBU about a young girl with Asperger’s syndrome (both were written by Vivienne Franzmann).

Hailing from Scotland, Miller came to London armed with a masters in English and history from Glasgow University and made her way into film on the production side, working for Kudos, Film4 and Ruby Film on projects

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including Dancing On The Edge, Jane Eyre and Tamara Drewe. She also produced some short films on the way, and most recently shot second unit on feature Suffragette for Sarah Gavron. “I didn’t think I could afford to go to film school, so that seemed like a way to learn about the industry,” she says.

Miller is developing Conception, a comedy drama for Parkville Pictures with writer Evan Placey about a gay couple who try to adopt, and feature Last Man Standing with writer Frazer Flintham about social housing in Stoke (“It’s less PC than it sounds,” she stresses).

Miller is also writing her own film, Tracks, to be set in Scotland, and a TV project with writer Claire Wilson for Endor Productions. “Storytelling has always been my focus,” she says.

“Most people discuss the visual aspects of my work, but it all comes from the story. I like to work with writers as well. I do write myself, but I’m not stuck on being a writer-director.”

Contact Michelle Archer, United Agents marcher@unitedagents.co.uk

Sarah Brocklehurst producer

Born in the US of Chinese and UK heritage, 29-year-old Sarah Brocklehurst broke out with 2011 micro-budget feature production Black Pond. It was almost putting the cart before the horse, she says. “I had this film, but it had almost happened by chance. I had to learn more.” Having studied English at Cambridge, where she was involved in theatre, Brocklehurst joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on graduation as apprentice to Sonia Friedman, working on West End shows including Matilda, and while there produced the Bafta-nominated Black Pond.

Since then, she has set out to understand the industry more fully, participating in training courses including the Triangle development scheme in 2012 and producing the Collabor8te short Between Places. She also started her own production company, Sarah Brocklehurst Productions, and works independently. “I’m entrepreneurial in the way that I work, cultivating relationships with investors, trying to build a business as an independent producer and raising a development fund,” she says. Drawn to comedy and female characters (“but not exclusively”) Brocklehurst’s current projects include the features Weird, written by former Screen Stars Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth — budgeted at $2.5m-$3.4m (£1.5m-£2m) — and an adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s novel Animals. “I am open to character-driven stories with humour and heart,” she says.

Contact Sarah Brocklehurst sarah@sarahbrocklehurst.com

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STARS OF TOMORROW DIRECTORS, WRITERS, pRODuCERS

From left Keri Collins, Michael Berliner, Dawn King

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Keri Collins Director

“I feel as if I’ve taken a long time to get here,” says Cardiff-born director Keri Collins. “I’ve been making short films since I was 20 years old. That’s almost 15 years.” Directing has been a life-long ambition for Collins, who made his micro-funded feature debut last year with the comedy Convenience, which was shown at Raindance. This follows on from a series of shorts, most notably Funday about a melancholic clown — made for a mere $840 (£500) — and his most recent work, A Welshman’s Guide To Breaking Up, starring Jonny Owen.

Mentored by Kenneth Branagh on the Guiding Lights scheme in 2008, Collins is “juggling a lot of balls — treatments, pilots, pitches — at the moment, waiting for one of them to go”. A fan of the much-maligned British rom-com, he plans to resuscitate the genre with his next feature, an adaptation of Scottish playwright DC Jackson’s My Romantic History, which won an award at Edinburgh in 2010 before selling out at London’s Bush Theatre. Produced by Jessica Levick and with development support from BBC Wales, the $1.7m (£1m) project is casting at the moment, with Collins moving the original location to Cardiff, which he calls “a great city that’s beautiful and fun but never really shown that way”.

“I know romantic comedy is kind of a dirty word at the moment, but those are the films I want to make,” says Collins. “I’ve realised recently that every film I’ve ever written has been about love, so funny films about love, that’s where I want to go now.”

Contact Nish Panchal, Sam Greenwood, Curtis Brown

nish@curtisbrown.co.uk,

sam@curtisbrown.co.uk

Michael Berliner producer

Bedfordshire-born producer Michael Berliner started out as an actor in his teens and throughout university; it wasn’t until he produced his own short film after graduation “that I realised this was the thing for me”.

Describing himself as a “creative producer who likes to be invested in the development process”, Berliner’s “first proper” short as a producer, The Beachcombers, won a London Best of Boroughs award in 2008, by which time he was leading a double life — runner by day, producer by night. Berliner has since produced Fyzal Boulifa’s award-winning Whore and the Vimeo short School Portrait, which notched up a million views in 10 days; and co-produced the short Friend Request Pending starring Judi Dench, as well as a

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string of Mustapha Kseibati’s shorts culminating in this year’s Mohammed. Mentored by Warp’s Mark Herbert as part of the Guiding Lights initiative, Berliner, 28, is now working on several features. Closest to production are How To Live Yours, to be written and directed

by Rachel Tunnard with Jodie Whittaker attached; a pilot co-funded by Creative England and the BFI; and The Wanderers, a coming-of-age comedy set in 1997 Colchester written and directed by Luke Snellin.

Contact Michael Berliner, Pico Pictures michael@picopictures.co.uk

Dawn King Writer

Dawn King is a much-awarded young writer for the stage and, at last, the screen, having signed a deal with Cowboy Films to adapt her sell-out play Ciphers from Bush Theatre.

The short film she wrote starring Olivia Colman, The Karman Line, premiered at SXSW this year and went on to Aspen where it quickly won two awards. Articles about King have a tendency to become a laundry-list of her impressive achievements, but the highlight would probably be winning the inaugural Royal National Theatre Playwright award for Foxfinder last December, although she did win the UK Film Council’s 25 Words or Less pitching prize in 2005, for the unproduced The Squatter’s Handbook.

“I’ve done my first treatment on Ciphers,” she says, “and starting to work on it is making me realise how much of a bigger job it is than a play.” Written back in 2010 “before all this crazy stuff kicked off in Russia, before Edward Snowden”, Ciphers is an innovative thriller about espionage and surveillance that centres on Justine, a new recruit to the spy business. “When you deal in the here and now, you have to be aware of what’s happening,” says King. “You have to be current.

I just follow my obsessions, really. The reason I started writing Ciphers was that I was really interested in the secret services, interested in doing the non-James Bond version where people screw up and they get it wrong and they have boring bits at their desk — but in a dramatic way, of course!”

Born in the West Country and currently living in London, King always wanted to work in film and TV, she says, but started out in young writers’ programmes at Soho Theatre and Royal Court in 2002 and just carried on. “It’s amazing how I’ve gotten this film commission through theatre,” she says. “But you never know what’s going to happen when you start to write.”

Contact Julia Mills, Berlin Associates juliam@berlinassociates.com

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STARS OF TOMORROW DIRECTORS, WRITERS, pRODuCERS

From left Matt Halsall, Simon Halsall

The Halsall brothers Writer-directors

Only 18 months separate 25-year-old Matt Halsall from his younger brother Simon. “Working with your brother means there’s someone who’s going to tell you how it is,” he says, adding, “but there can be tension sometimes because there’s not that professional politeness.”

The Halsall brothers are highly unusual in that, as UK film-makers born in Folkestone, they have made two Koreanlanguage, revenge genre, short films despite not speaking Korean or, really, living in the country.

Their first self-funded short, If I Had A

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Heart, is an impressive, blood-soaked, fatalistic tale of revenge, while they are currently putting the finishing touches to the 45-50 minute mini-feature When Dead Ghosts Cry, set in North Korea but shot in their London apartment.

Having signed with Agile Films, for commercials and videos, and WME and set to collaborate with Rook Films/Agile on their debut feature, the Halsall brothers are breaking through. While their shorts betray a film-geek’s love of Asian genre, with a particular debt to the Tartan Films catalogue, there is real depth to their film-making — surprising, given the circumstances in which they were made.

Restless after graduation and unable to break into film, Matt went to Korea to teach English for a year, winding up in a village two hours outside Seoul. Simon, meanwhile, was graduating from Bournemouth’s film production course.

Once Matt had saved up enough money, he brought Simon out to Korea and the pair made the film over an intense fiveweek production.

“Small things like booking kit was taking two weeks instead of 10 minutes,” recalls Matt, “because we were asking people to translate for us. My then-girlfriend got so pissed off.” Midway through, Simon got his first big editing

gig on a commercial in Shanghai, while their lead actor and close friend Kim Min-jung was called up for military service. “Everything looks so planned and perfectly composed when it was mayhem, majestic chaos, trying to get it finished,” says Matt.

When Dead Ghosts Cry was also selffunded, although Agile Films stepped in with $11,800 (£7,000) for finishing funds.

Now they are developing their debut feature, about the true story of a Japanese soldier who spent 30 years in the Philippine jungle, unaware the war was over.

Contact Oliver Azis, Independent Talent oliverazis@independenttalent.com

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STARS OF TOMORROW DIRECTORS, WRITERS, pRODuCERS

From left Chris Foggin, Aneil Karia, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Chris Foggin Director

How do you get Judi Dench to appear in her first short film? Just ask nicely, says 28-year-old Durham native Chris Foggin, who cast Dench in the highly amusing Friend Request Pending before directing a longer, even more appealing short That Night last year as a romantic two-hander with James Corden and Alexandra Roach.

Foggin’s first low-budget feature, the $423,000 (£250,000) Kids In Love, starring Will Poulter, Alma Jodorowsky and

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Cara Delevingne has just shot for Ealing Films, yet Foggin isn’t particularly wellconnected in the industry: “I went to study media and film at Newcastle University with not a single contact in this business,” he says. “I was working in a sandwich shop and a guy knew someone who knew someone who put me up for a job as an assistant floor runner on an ITV drama and I took it from there.”

With gusto: now he is prepping his second feature, from a script by Stefan Golaszewski (Him & Her, the play Sex With A Stranger) for Ruby Films. Sub-

marine’s Craig Roberts is attached to star in How I Fell In Love, which is being made with Ruby Films, the BFI and Protagonist. “I have a simple way,” says Foggin of his style. “I love the Richard Curtis/Woody Allen way of soft romantic comedy — I have a great family, friends, a beautiful wife, that’s my approach with it. 12 Years A Slave is an incredible film but I wouldn’t know where to start with that.”

With Dench, “I met her and she agreed to be in a short before I even had an idea.” Centring it around social media

made the actress “as nervous as I was”, says Foggin, “but I said, ‘Just trust me. I know I’m young, but this is my generation, my thing.’”

Contact Josh Varney, Mady Neil, 42 joshvarney@42mp.com, madyneil@42mp.com

Aneil Karia Writer-director

Aneil Karia’s Beat is a masterful short film: explosive, involving, tense, different, and almost entirely dialogue-free. It stars Ben Whishaw, but not as you’ve

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attached. “It’s in a good place right now,” he says. “It takes a lo-fi approach to the bank robbery genre, chucks all the Hollywoodness out of the window, and looks at the weirder reality of people who carry out bank crimes. It’s quite meaty.”

Contact Kat Buckle, Curtis Brown kat.buckle@curtisbrown.co.uk

Krysty Wilson-Cairns Writer

seen him before. Self-financed and shot on 16mm, it firmly establishes Karia as a talent to watch in the film world, although he has been knocking on the door for a while. After studying journalism and working briefly at Sky News, Karia studied producing and directing for TV at the NFTS. “Weirdly I developed my love for film while I was in film school,” he says. There followed six years of directing “in various forms”, and Karia had representation for music videos and commercials, but he was still looking for “a way to get into directing the kind of

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material that excited me and got me into it in the first place”.

The answer was Beat, “done as lo-fi and as simply as I could, without detracting from the idea”. Beat’s edgy central performance from Whishaw is also a revelation. “I always had Ben in my head — it didn’t develop as a traditional script, it was a jumble of mad ideas that I wanted to condense into a burst of film,” says Karia. “I had met Ben once and I knew he’d be into it. I knew he could be edgy and unhinged and with this madness bubbling away. I sent the treatment with

an e-mail saying that if you’re free at all for two days and you like this, we’ll work around you. And he committed.”

From an Irish, Indian, Ugandan, Welsh background, Karia was born in Ipswich, studied at Leeds, but has been in London since he was 21 (he is now 30). Last year he moved to Los Angeles briefly to study film at the University of Southern Californi, but Beat has opened up opportunities for him in the UK and he has made the decision to come back.

His focus is a low-budget feature, provisionally titled Close, with Whishaw again

“I wrote Aether over Christmas, during six weeks. I really, really went for it,” says Krysty Wilson-Cairns. And it really, really went. By March 13, FilmNation Entertainment had swooped for the riveting, high-concept sci-fi film, written by a “self-confessed science nerd” who was intrigued by the concept of sound never disappearing.

Born in Glasgow, Wilson-Cairns studied screenwriting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and went for her masters in screenwriting at the NFTS, graduating only last year.

She is 26 and works nights at a Soho pub, but she is also a “physics geek” and a huge fan of films such as Minority Report; Aether is a tribute to Memento and The Conversation, with its lead character named Harry after Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 snoop played by Gene Hackman.

Wilson-Cairns first met her agent, Marnie Podos, at the NFTS showcase last year, and together they hammered out her idea for Aether before Wilson-Cairns sat down at Christmas to write it (“framed as a procedural, as I didn’t think people would buy it from someone as young as me otherwise”).

“I’ve never been paid for writing before,” confesses Wilson-Cairns, who has just finished her second draft, but the screenplay is riveting and undoubtedly more is to come. FilmNation production president Aaron Ryder (who produced Memento) confessed he was “astounded by the level of talent and inventiveness from such a young voice”.

He is not the only one to come calling: “So many people in America read Aether and they’ve sent me so many books and possible adaptations, so a lot of things have opened up, and I’ve had some ideas as well that have had a really positive reception,” she says. “But I haven’t looked at them yet as I’ve been so intently focused on Aether.”

Contact Marnie Podos, United Agents mpodos@unitedagents.co.uk

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STARS OF TOMORROW HEADS OF DEPARTMENT

From left Si Bell, Laura Tarrant-Brown, Rose Wicksteed

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Si Bell Cinematographer

It is unusual for a DoP to work his way up the camera department on set; there are a lot of steps to climb. Si Bell solved the issue by packing his downtime with shorts for young directors and valuable practical experience on bigger sets, mostly second unit. But with two features as head of department due out in 2014, 30-year-old Durham-born Bell has established himself as a name to watch in the UK film industry.

The two features are Orthodox, directed by David Leon and starring Stephen Graham; and Electricity, directed by Bryn Higgins and starring Agyness Deyn (due out in September 23 through Soda Pictures).

Bell went to film school at Northumbria University and quickly realised the camera was calling. He took a job as a trainee and credits his professional development to mentors Sam McCurdy (The Descent) and Lol Crawley (Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom). “While I was a camera trainee, I was borrowing the cameras and shooting shorts for myself,” recalls Bell. “It got to a point where I started getting a few thousand pounds budget as DoP. In the meantime I was getting longer feature jobs as camera assistant and turning them down.

It’s not an easy progression. I wouldn’t say I come from an affluent background and I didn’t have much money to be turning down paid work, but I wanted to build my reel up, get a reputation.”

Bell is currently working on the Irish feature Tiger Raid, starring Robert Sheehan and Brian Gleeson, which will shoot in Jordan. “Script is the key,” he says. “If it’s not a good script, then I can’t really commit.”

Contact Laurily Adams, Sara Putt Associates

laurily@saraputt.co.uk

Laura Tarrant-Brown Production designer

At its best, production design feels ‘real’, the world presented onscreen convincing and believable, no matter where it might be.

Laura Tarrant-Brown did just that with Mahalia Belo’s 2012 short Volume, creating a crafted world that was also natural, as opposed to the stylised Bafta-nominated short Keeping Up With The Joneses in 2013.

This versatile designer has not stopped working since graduating from the NFTS, with two features being offered immediately (the low-budget Love Me Do and Destiny Ekaragha’s Gone Too Far) followed this year by the Goa-set Jet Trash. TarrantBrown is currently working on Adam Randall’s futuristic iBoy.

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Unusually for a production designer, Tarrant-Brown doesn’t come from an architectural or theatre background, having studied fashion, communication and promotion at Central Saint Martins and then working as an art director at an ad agency and a fashion magazine. “But I was always interested in set design and the creation of worlds,” she says. “Getting to the NFTS was a big challenge for me in that we had to submit plans and elevations for the interview and that was a first.” Aged 30, London-born Tarrant-Brown says: “The chance to make a new world is always fascinating, but that’s not what I’m after — it’s how the director approaches the character and where they want to take it. I wouldn’t want to do something that was visually interesting if it didn’t have something going on narratively.”

Contact Laura Tarrant-Brown laura@lauratarrantbrown.com

Rose Wicksteed Casting director

“There’s no formula,” says Rose Wicksteed of the profession of casting. “When you’re dealing in the currency of people, it’s such an unknown.” Wicksteed, a drama school graduate, found her way into casting almost by accident. “I was working as a runner and a researcher in TV and then I was a people researcher in observational documentaries, which, when you think of it, is casting really.” She then started casting actors for dramatic reconstructions and found herself hooked. “I just loved it.”

Wicksteed worked as an assistant to Nina Gold and then Lucinda Syson and Elaine Grainger for years before her big break on Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, working with legendary US casting director Ellen Lewis and getting a UK casting credit. “It was a massive break for me,” she says.

Last year, Wicksteed cast the Bafta-winning short film Room 8 and another nominated short Keeping Up With The Joneses.

Now, she is busy casting the debut features for The Brothers Lynch (Residual with producer Ed Barratt) and Stephen Fingleton (The Survivalist). After casting Nightingale for director Elliott Lester and producer Josh Weinstock, she is assembling their New York-set feature Elephant’s Memory. And she also will be working with FilmNation Entertainment this year.

“There’s a lot going on,” says the 33-yearold Londoner. “Lots of really exciting directors. The budgets are dramatically lower, though, and the challenge is always there.”

Contact Rose Wicksteed rose@rosewicksteed.com

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 23

STARS OF TOMORROW One-TO-One

Amma Asante & Lynsey Miller Amma Asante is gearing up for the UK release of her second feature, Belle. She talks to Star of Tomorrow Lynsey Miller about connecting to characters and not being pigeon-holed

Lynsey Miller As I’m looking to shoot my first

feature, I’m always interested in how other directors started. How do you reflect on your debut A Way Of Life and the lessons learnt?

Amma Asante I’m one of those people that is of the view, rightly or wrongly, that you’ve either got it or not, and then you’ve just honed it by doing it over and over again.

There was one brilliant book that I read in the build-up to doing my first feature about the director connecting to the work, whether it’s yours or someone else’s. It mentioned the idea that when people are writing, there are all sorts of unconscious connections you make in a material. Your job as the director is to draw those out so you have a nuanced piece that has subtext no matter what. What I strive to do now from a creative point of view is to make sure I’ve got that connection with the script so I understand it, almost better than the writer does.

From a practical point of view, I try to make the exterior reflect the interior of my characters. As an example with Belle, at the start I really wanted to make the girls feel like they were dolls in a giant doll’s house because of their innocence. So all the rooms are sparsely furnished, the ceilings are high and the characters are in pastel colours. But as they start to get more aware of what’s going on around them, everything gets smaller, the ceilings get lower and visually, they appear to get bigger in their own world.

Finally, the other thing I’d say is to make yourself physically fit for the length of time that you have to be on the ball. The one thing I learnt with my first film is that if you have a bad day, it ends up on screen and there’s not a lot you can do. I realised I had to be physically fit and mentally alert. The sheer level of tiredness, if you’re not used to it, can really get to you.

LM In terms of crew, do you find it best to work with a core group of collaborators or is it project dependant?

AA It is project dependant but I always knew what I wanted to do with Belle was to try and find at least part of a team I’d want to work with again. I’d definitely want to work with my DoP [Ben Smithard] again and again, and I’ll never let go of my production designer [Simon Bowles]. In terms of the

24 Screen International Stars of Tomorrow 2014

creative aspect of film-making, I know they’re on the same page as me.

Ultimately, it all comes down on your shoulders so you have to be a bit tough about it when you’re choosing who you work with.

I think finding a team and finding a rhythm together is important. Also, when you do fight — and there will always be that one necessary argument — it’s over and done with.

You can close the wound and get on with it.

LM As a director, I’m keen to work in different genres. After A Way Of Life, did you find that people tried to pigeonhole you and how did you address that?

AA Like you, I want to work in different genres. Stephen Frears’ career is one I admire where you don’t really quite know what he’s going to do next.

As women, in a way, I think it’s just as important that we do surprise and we do show that our skills are viable across many different genres. I did find that people tried to pigeonhole me and I think it’s one of the reasons it took me so long to make the second movie. Because I wanted to do something so different, when I was taking them those projects, their response would be, ‘Isn’t this too big for you?’ They didn’t necessarily mean production-wise, but sometimes meant the big ideas, so it took a while to do something like Belle because people [usually saw] me doing something edgy and small.

LM I never attended film school and so in moving from making self-funded short films to working on commissioned pieces with a budget, I was surprised to find in some areas I had more freedom with less money. How do you find working with different budgets?

AA I think necessity is the mother of invention, if I can be a bit clichéd. Sometimes, we start to think more laterally when we have less. One of the things I learned, being a writer-director, is that there’s more than one way to get to your goal. I would write it a particular way and think that’s the only way it could be, otherwise two and two won’t equal four. But then I realised you can do three plus one and do it so many different ways. When you’ve got less money, you think of those various ways.

LM Despite the obvious differences, A Way Of Life and Belle for me both serve as very inti-

‘There is a champion out there for you, and you’ve just got to keep going until you find them’ Amma Asante

mate character studies. What do you look for in a story?

AA I like exploring the woman’s experience and I like exploring issues of identity and how we cope with our identity or lack of it. Most film-makers often think of themselves as outsiders as well as insiders, and we inhabit both of those worlds, but both of those characters have a lot of me in them. Writing and directing is kind of my education as I didn’t have a great education, so this is how I learn about the world around me. It’s self-exploratory.

The easiest way to create good characters is to be very honest with who you are.

LM You worked with untrained actors on A Way Of Life, but trained actors on Belle. How different was that and did your approach change?

AA I try to respect what they do because it’s hard, and I ask that they respect what I do and they trust my knowledge of the story.

We’ll always have a conversation but ultimately what they were all good at doing [on Belle], is that they basically trusted me. The whole process of directing is communicating well with everybody. That’s the thing that makes you tired. There’s no point in the day where you turn around and someone doesn’t have a question for you.

LM What has been your biggest obstacle when trying to get things made?

AA Financing. For me, everybody would say ‘I love the script’ and follow it up with ‘but we’ve just made a costume drama and it didn’t work’, or ‘we’re working on something else that’s similar’. There would always be a viable excuse. The biggest obstacle is not delivering what everybody is expecting and therefore people being frightened that you were too risky a bet.

LM So how did you get them to take the risk on you with Belle?

AA A new team came into the BFI that included Chris Collins and he’s someone who has worked as a hands-on producer, and from that viewpoint he understood how directing skills translate and trusted that I could do it. It also helped that I had a producer [Damian Jones] who just believed from the get-go that I was the right person to do it. I always say, when I go to do talks in schools, there is a champion out there for you, and you’ve just s got to keep going until you find them. n

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Photograph by Polskey

From left Amma Asante, Lynsey Miller

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Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 25

STARS OF TOMORROW One-TO-One

Hossein Amini & Aneil Karia The Oscar-nominated writer of Drive and The Wings Of The Dove, Hossein Amini, made his directorial debut on The Two Faces Of January. He talks to Star of Tomorrow Aneil Karia about ignoring the screenwriting books

Aneil Karia I tend to worry a lot about tone and mood and the feel of the piece. What I love about your work is that you have an incredible story and narrative structure but you also have a strong mood. I know it has a lot to do with the director, but is it important to insert some mood and tone in your scripts?

Hossein Amini I tend to overwrite quite a lot in terms of scene descriptions. Also beats between dialogue — I often write a little slugline in between lines. Subtext is such an important part of dialogue, there’s a danger if you don’t at least hint at it, people lean on the lines of dialogue and not the beats inbetween. Not having too much said and explained creates a mystery. People often don’t say what they mean and often dialogue is very throwaway in conversation, it’s often quite mundane, but there’s a subtext behind it. I’ll write that in.

Of course, this is what screenwriting books tell you not to do, but I always feel I need it. I think it’s quite helpful to set the mood and help the actors, often for the read too as these can be selling documents, you’re trying to get someone to finance it and they have to read it as a full experience, emotional as well as visual. They say only write what you can show, but I think it’s a way of communication between you and the director — they can ignore it, of course, but as a writer you want to get the intention across.

In the opening sequence of Drive, there’s six pages of script with no dialogue. It’s just on the page, everything, all through that car chase. Block after block of description with just a bit of radio dialogue in there. I think it’s OK to do that. Often you realise through the process that you don’t need the line. There’s nothing more satisfying than when you replace the line with the look.

AK As an aspiring director if I read that, I’d look forward to trying to create it. As a writer, do you go back and judge the finished product later against what you wrote?

HA I don’t go back and watch my films a lot.

In fact, some of them I haven’t watched at all.

I just read through the reviews. I think when it’s finished there’s nothing you can do. When I watch it, even if it’s something that’s been well reviewed, I still cringe.

It’s what I found as a director — you tend

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to lose your perspective after three or four viewings. It becomes such an impure viewing experience. It’s hard to see it clearly and not go completely snowblind in the editing process.

AK I have found that very hard as well, particularly with things I liked less. Did you get lots of people giving you notes? Have you had experience with focus groups and things like that?

HA It was the hardest thing for me as a director. You stop using your eyes and listen too much to people. You get bored with it, you watch the same scene 50 times. You just have more and more people to listen to and then it becomes figuring out who you trust.

It would be great if you could have a pill to forget everything and watch it again with totally clear eyes.

I actually think focus groups can be very useful, though — not the numbers as they can cause panic. But it’s like having a bucket of cold water poured on you. You go in at some stage thinking the thing is perfect.

There’s almost a shock in the fact that you haven’t made the best film ever and it’s somewhere far away from that. Being reminded by a pretty hard, brutal audience who aren’t your friends that there’s a lot of work to do, it’s almost like having an electric shock and waking up and going back to work. That’s the most useful thing I’ve found, both as a writer and as a director, that extra surge of energy. They’re very painful things though.

AK Film always looked like a magical world to me and it still does. But a lot of my friends are obsessed with reading the trades, there are so many sources of news. You start to realise what a brutal world it is. When you’re operating at the level you’re at these days, you see that first hand. Does that become bleak? How do you retain your distance from that?

HA You have bleak moments in your career. I got an Oscar nomination for The Wings Of The Dove and for seven years nothing happened — nothing got made. You sink into a dark place where you’re a talentless screenwriter.

What I’ve gotten better at accepting is that it’s not going to be up the whole way. Nurse your wounds when you’re down and just keep working. What I’m most scared of about

‘People often don’t say what they mean and often dialogue is very throwaway, but there’s a subtext behind it.

I’ll write that in’ Hossein Amini

reading too much — whether it’s reviews or industry gossip — is that I’m not going to be able to get up the next day and write.

AK I’m working on a feature, low-budget inevitably. It’s a very extensive, meaty treatment, 35 pages right now. On paper it’s not a huge step from that to a script. But I can’t help feeling I probably lack something about that process. Do you think there are too many writer-directors… that too many directors think they’re better than they are and should learn to collaborate more?

HA I think in a way you have to be a writer to get your first crack at directing. But directors want to work quite a lot, so by the time you write your own script and direct it and edit and publicise it, it can take two or three years out of your life, so directors end up working on other scripts even if they can write. I think it’s a fantastic skill to have for a director. The best directors I’ve worked with in terms of script development have been those who have written themselves as they’re very aware of the problems.

I had always wanted to direct. But there are a lot of really talented directors around, and the producer thinks, ‘If I get this great script, why should I let him direct? I’ll go up the list and the script is good enough to get an A-list director attached.’ Then it’s hard to hang on to it. They say, ‘We can get Scorsese to do it or Michael Mann,’ and you say, ‘Okay, I’ll direct the next one.’ And it goes on and on.

The only difference with The Two Faces Of January is that Viggo Mortensen read it and liked it and said, ‘I’m happy with you directing,’ and going out with him as a partnership made it easier to raise the money. If you’re going to be a writer-director, you need to set it out from the beginning. Even if The Two Faces Of January does well, I sort of still feel like I’m a writer and it’s hard to shake it off.

What you set out doing early in your career is really important, the switchovers are harder than you think.

AK When you’re on set and see directors work, one problem when you’re younger is to think, ‘I should direct like that; I should be extremely lively and I should surprise people and use all those techniques.’ But that’s probably wrong. You should just be the director you are. You must have been on a few sets, »

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From left Hossein Amini, Aneil Karia

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Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 27

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STARS OF TOMORROW One-TO-One

From left Aneil Karia, Hossein Amini

were you just confident about how you were going to go about directing or were you thinking, ‘What kind of director should I be?’

HA You can only really be yourself. Maybe because I did it in my forties and not in my twenties — then I might have been tempted to put on more of a show. I didn’t worry about being stupid on set. If I got the number on a lens wrong, people laughed and it was all very friendly. And as a first-timer, people really want to help you and that’s very special. I don’t know if it happens on a second or third film. I found it easier to take advice than I might have done in my twenties, and I didn’t feel threatened by it. I just found it useful.

I was well prepared because I was paranoid about it being a first film. I’d storyboarded it fully, and that made me feel confident, but I didn’t fall into the mad-director mould. I’ve watched directors do it and that big personality thing, you either have it or you don’t and if you’re faking it you’ll be found out soon enough.

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I thought Ben Whishaw was amazing in your short film, Beat. It was an explosive performance, which I haven’t seen from him before.

AK He’s incredibly talented. I tried to talk it all through with him but he has the genius. Probably the explosive part was what attracted him, it was a chance to go in a different direction. He just went for it. I’m always just bowled over by how good actors are.

HA Me too. He’s dangerous in it. I always expected going into directing that you’d take actors into a corner and have a long, long chat.

And what I found surprising is how quickly you’d need to give them their note so you don’t interfere with their process. If I wasn’t happy with the take, I would be thinking how to get it across and not have them overthink it and not interfere with actors who are that good.

AK How do you work out what’s a great book and that’s all it probably should exist as, and a great book for a film?

HA The films that I fall in love with and want to adapt tend to have enough space in the

‘[As a director] I found it easier to take advice than I might have done in my twenties, and I didn’t feel threatened by it’ Hossein Amini

book for me to come in and add the things I’m interested in. So half adaptations and half originals, in a way, where you can invent scenes. If someone says something is unadaptable, it tends to be more exciting for me. If I can’t put something of myself in there, it’s less interesting.

I can remember when I worked on Snow White And The Huntsman, coming in and having to write out scenes they’d literally storyboarded — the director had such a clear vision of what he wanted. Jobs like that are very well paid and they’re interesting, but the danger is that you’re there to sort of take dictation and I find that less interesting.

A lot of these movies suffer because of the mad rush to shoot. A danger is to say, ‘It’s two months before shooting and our script isn’t there but if we throw lots of money at screenwriters we can fix it.’

I’ve now learned a lesson, in that I know how long it takes me to do a good job. It takes me about a week just to get fully into a new s world in my head. n

Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 29

STARS OF TOMORROW CLASS OF 2013

Where are they now?

Screen catches up with the Stars of 2013, whose members have gone to feature with George Clooney, join Jez Butterworth’s latest play opposite Hugh Jackman, and take on adaptation duties for DreamWorks

All photography by Yves Salmon

The actors 1

www.ScreenDaily.com

Issue 1763 June-July 2013

JAMES NORTON

Norton is starring as the psychopathic Yorkshire rapist and murderer Tommy Lee Royce in the BBC’s Happy Valley and is filming the lead role in ITV’s Grantchester as a jazz-loving, murdersolving vicar. Film-wise, he is waiting on Belle, Northmen: A Viking Saga and Bonobo to be released.

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FREYA MAVOR

Mavor shot New Worlds, the sequel to The Devil’s Whore, opposite Alice Englert and Jamie Dornan and starred in a play at London’s Arcola Theatre called Boys. For the last four months, she has been taking a course at the prestigious l’Ecole du Jeu in Paris.

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UK Stars of

FRANZ DRAMEH

Drameh’s Edge Of Tomorrow is in cinemas. He has also played the lead in two indie movies this year, Matador Pictures’ Residue and Unstoppable Entertainment’s Legacy.

RAFFEY CASSIDY

Cassidy recently wrapped production on Brad Bird and Disney’s science-fiction blockbuster Tomorrowland. She stars as the female lead opposite George Clooney. The film will be released worldwide on May 22, 2015.

TOMORROW 2013 Screen’s pick of the hottest acting and film-making talent

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ED SKREIN

Skrein beat some 200 actors to take the lead in the new Transporter franchise and starts filming in June.

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30 Screen International Stars of Tomorrow 2014

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MALACHI KIRBY

Kirby has recently filmed the feature Dough with Jonathan Pryce, directed by John Goldschmidt.

He is currently filming a lead role in the US young adult gothic feature film Fallen, directed

by Scott Hicks.

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7

CUSH JUMBO

Jumbo went on to star in her onewoman play Josephine And I at London’s Bush Theatre, which won her an Evening Standard award and another Olivier nomination and is set to transfer to New York in early 2015. Film-wise, she is shooting the female lead in the feature Remainder opposite Tom Sturridge and will film City Of Tiny Lights in September opposite Riz Ahmed.

From October 1, she will be starring in The River written by Jez Butterworth at Circle In The Square Theatre in New York opposite Hugh Jackman, with Ian Rickson directing.

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LUKE NEWBERRY

Newberry has just been seen in the second series of In The Flesh on BBC Three, and was nominated for best actor in the Bafta Television Craft Awards.

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ROSIE DAY

Day has shot the features Sixteen for director Rob Brown and Heart Of Lightness for Jan Vardoen, and has also appeared in E4’s Misfits. She is currently performing in Velocity at London’s Finborough Theatre.

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MATT KANE

Kane has been playing recurring roles in both ABC’s Switched At Birth and Once Upon A Time.

He can be next seen in The Last Of Robin Hood, with Dakota Fanning, Susan Sarandon and Kevin Kline, which premiered at Toronto International Film Festival last September and will be released in cinemas this summer.

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BILL MILNER

Milner is currently at London’s Trafalgar Studios in Another Country, having started out with the production last autumn in Chichester. He has also had a guest role in the comedy series The Job Lot and is awaiting the release of his feature Barking At Trees.

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WILL POULTER

Poulter won the EE Bafta Rising Star award in 2013, and received the breakthrough performance award at the MTV Movie Awards for his role in We’re The Millers. His film The Maze Runner will be released by Fox in September 2014 and he has just shot two indie films, Kids In Love for director Chris Foggin (one of this year’s Stars of Tomorrow) and the Dublinset Glassland, the second feature from Irish director Gerard Barrett, opposite Toni Collette and Jack Reynor.

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ANTONIA CLARKE

Clarke has shot a part in Woody Allen’s Magic In The Moonlight and the independent feature Altar. She has also recently completed filming on ITV mini-series The Great Fire.

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ROSE LESLIE

The fourth season of Game Of Thrones is currently airing and the feature Honeymoon, in which Leslie plays the lead, will be released by Magnolia Pictures’ Magnet Releasing. Leslie is the lead in ITV’s The Great Fire opposite Charles Dance and Andrew Buchan and will shoot the indie feature Sticky Notes opposite Ray Liotta in the US shortly.

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Stars of Tomorrow 2014 Screen International 31

STARS OF TOMORROW CLASS OF 2013

The directors & writers Issue 1763 June-July 2013

www.ScreenDaily.com

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UK Stars of

TOMORROW 2013 Screen’s pick of the hottest acting and film-making talent

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CATHY BRADY

Brady is currently developing features with Element Pictures and with Italian producer Carlo Cresto-Dina, whose film The Wonders competed at Cannes this year. She is also directing a block of Jack Thorne’s new crime drama series Glue for Eleven Film/Channel 4.

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HONG KHAOU

Khaou’s debut feature Lilting premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the best cinematography award. Khaou was also awarded the Sundance Institute/ Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award for his new screenplay Monsoon and has since been

JON CROKER

Since being recognised as a Screen Star of Tomorrow in June 2013, Croker has written Black Palace for Pathé, The Abominable Snowman for Hammer Films and the most recent draft of Hallelujah for Sprout, Revolution and Apocalypso. He gained US representation in the autumn with WME and has recently signed to write the US remake of French film The Prey for DreamWorks and Cohen Media Group. Of the completed films he has worked on, Desert Dancer was picked up by Relativity and will be released in the US this summer; followed by releases for Paddington and The Woman In Black: Angel Of Death this winter.

selected to go forward for the Sundance directors and screenwriters labs. He was signed by CAA for the US, while Lilting will be released in August in the UK by Artificial Eye and later in the year in the US by Strand.

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THE BROTHERS LYNCH

David and Keith Lynch have attached cast for their sci-fi thriller Residual, which they hope to announce soon. Their period espionage mini-series The Gunpowder Conspiracy was picked up by Stephen Fry’s Sprout Pictures and following a period of development is now being pushed out to potential broadcasting partners.

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ARINZE KENE

Kene has spent the year working on his three stageplay commissions at Bush Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith and English Touring Theatre.

He is in the process of optioning his new screenplay Cure to Sixteen Films while Seekers moves forward with Strays Films. He is also developing a feature for Film4 called Homeless Heist.

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JOE BARTON

Barton has a three-part drama about the First World War called Our World War in production at the BBC, and is writing screenplays for Shine, Film4, The Imaginarium and Montebello.

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STEPHEN FINGLETON

Fingleton’s script The Survivalist, which topped the Brit List last year and appeared on the Black List, is now in production. Martin McCann is starring with Star of Tomorrow 2014 Mia Goth. He is also co-developing a thriller for Scott Free entitled Fog, and has been commissioned to write an original thriller by Working Title based on his own idea.

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RACHEL DE-LAHAY

De-lahay’s play Routes was staged at London’s Royal Court and her new play Circles opened at Birmingham Rep and is transferring to London’s Tricycle Theatre.

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FIZZ AND GINGER FILMS

Now represented by The Artists Partnership, Fizz And Ginger’s Tori Hart and Matthew Butler finished their first feature, Miss In Her Teens, narrated by Ian McKellen. eOne is distributing. They have also completed their second, Two Down, featuring Conleth Hill and s Felicity Montagu. ■

32 Screen International Stars of Tomorrow 2014

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