Film4 Productions

Film4.com editor Catherine Bray takes a look at an acclaimed new talent who has emerged from Critics’ Week at Cannes 2013: debut feature director Paul Wright, whose Film4-backed drama of survivor guilt and surrealist imagery For Those In Peril was warmly received yesterday

31 year old director Paul Wright’s career is shaping up pretty seamlessly thus far. His first short film Hikikomori, made while studying Film at Glasgow’s RSAMD, won the Scottish Bafta for Best New Work, Best Drama at the RTS Awards in 2007, and received a Bafta nomination in 2007 for Best Short. Then, while studying for a Fiction Directing MA at the NFTS in 2008, he made another short, Believe, which won Locarno’s Golden Leopard for Best International Short, plus awards at Winterthur and Leeds International Film Festival. In 2010, his short Photos Of God was selected for Berlin, and his graduation film, Until The River Runs Red won the Bafta for Best Short in 2011. Now, his debut feature has premiered at Cannes, in Critics’ Week, the strand that aims to highlight the work of talented newcomers. It’s the stuff of dreams and envy for aspirant filmmakers.

“Critics’ Week is the perfect platform,” Paul says when we speak, the day after the premiere. “We couldn’t ask for more, or hope for more of a way for it to stand out and hopefully connect with an audience in an increasingly crowded market place. It won’t be for everyone, but we hope that for the people who like it, it really has an impact.”

A cinephile from a young age, Paul’s earliest memory of a film that really made an impact on him is Nic Roeg’s superlative study of grief, Don’t Look Now – “I saw it when I was probably younger than I should have been, and the ending really got to me”. While he says that Roeg’s cult classic was not a direct influence on For Those In Peril, it’s fair to say that with their common themes of grief, guilt and the supernatural feel those emotions can have when heightened (plus an arresting shock image in the final moments), they would make a great double bill.

Another film with which some reviews have compared For Those In Peril is last year’s hot ticket at Cannes, Beasts Of The Southern Wild. Like Beasts, For Those In Peril features a lead performance that is being hailed as the arrival of a potential new star. George MacKay, who I spoke with yesterday, is, as producer Mary Burke puts it, “so different from the character that he’s playing. He’s from Barnes, and he’s kind of meek and posh and sweet.” George worked with Paul to create Aaron, the increasingly unbalanced sole survivor of the wreck of a fishing boat that claimed the lives of four local lads including Aaron’s brother Billy. Aaron is the character around which the film is built, and needed a strong lead. Mary remembers, “we did all these casting calls, searching for a needle in a haystack for a young actor to play and hold the lead role throughout the whole film, like with Submarine and This Is England. And I had never seen George in anything, so I had no idea who he was. He came into the office with a guitar on his back ‘cause he was going back and forth from Wales for How I Live Now and just came in for, like, 20 minutes, and yet I was almost crying in his audition. That’s how good it was. And I don’t cry, because I’m from New York.”

Paul was also thrilled with their leading man. “We knew pretty soon we were onto a winner. We knew we had our guy. On the shoot he gave 100% – we couldn’t have done it without him. He was in practically every scene.” And for his part, George says: “I’ve never had such a close relationship with a director before.” This attention to detail (Paul spent two days going through the script one-on-one with George before shooting) paid off, with positive reviews including Robbie Collins’ assessment in the Telegraph of the performance as “terrifyingly good: George MacKay, who four years ago was already showing promise in The Boys are Back, is simply heartbreaking in a performance that leaves you feeling like your own soul has been peeled.”

But Paul isn’t a director who came into the profession because he likes bossing actors about – he admits his initial passion lay with technique, but says of directing actors, “I’m getting better, but I’ve got this slight obsession with visuals and audio. It’s a testament to the actors that they came on board a project where such a lot of the script has no dialogue.” One of the most notable bits of dialogue is a recurring tale about a monster in the deeps, with which Aaron becomes fixated. I asked Paul whether it is based on a folk tale local to where he grew up, or completely made up for the film. “I guess growing up near the ocean, there were a lot of stories,” he says, “but it’s a combination of stories and myth, rather than any single one that already existed. I wanted to leave space for the audience to interpret the film for themselves.”

Paul has been mulling over the kernel of the idea for this film for several years, and began working on an actual script about two years ago. Yet this is the first time For Those In Peril has encountered an audience and begun to exist outside of Paul’s control. “Today was the first Q&A with what you might call average punters, from pensioners to teenagers – some of the responses were overwhelming. There were a few tears.”

Paul himself is ready to move on to the next project, which is at the ideas stage. I suggest that I can’t really imagine him jumping to sign on to direct an Iron Man 4 or a Transformers 5, but were the offer to be made, would he go to Hollywood? “Well, I think about it in terms of whether an idea is something you can care about for years of your life. I need to have an emotional investment, but there are plenty of different types of cinema that can provoke a reaction.” With his cited list of “gamechanger” filmmakers including the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noe, and an ambition to follow in their foot steps in creating wide-ranging, authored works of cinema, I can’t wait to see what Paul does next.

For Those In Peril will be released in the UK in 2013

Film4.com editor Catherine Bray catches up with George MacKay, star of Kevin Macdonald’s highly anticipated How I Live Now, and Paul Wright’s For Those In Peril, which premiered in Critics Week at Cannes 2013…

I arrived to interview George MacKay feeling like a half-drowned shipwreck victim, having run through a mighty deluge along the Croisette from the Palais, where I’ve just caught the underwhelming Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian) at the 8.30am screening. Fortunately, there’s nothing underwhelming about For Those In Peril, Paul Wright’s debut feature and the reason George is in town. Selected for the Critics’ Week strand, which focuses on new voices, the Scotland-set drama tells the tale of the sole survivor of a fishing boat accident that killed everyone aboard but a young man named Aaron (McKay), including Aaron’s brother Billy. It has already been described by the Telegraph critic Robbie Collin as the “flipside of last year’s Cannes hit Beasts Of The Southern Wild; a film that reassured us that all we seek can be found bobbing somewhere on the waves. For Those In Peril makes some very similar assurances, although they sound less like a promise than a threat.”

As we begin our beach-side interview with the rain beating down on the roof of the temporary marquee, the waves crashing in the background and my boots half-full of water, the setting is in some ways the perfect backdrop to chat about a film in which the sea is a brooding presence that preys on Aaron’s grief-addled mind.

So apart from bringing the British weather with you, how has your Cannes been so far?

It’s been fantastic, although I haven’t been here long. Me and Paul got in yesterday and had a bit of an explore, met up with a few friends for a drink – the DoP Benny [Kracun], the editor Michael [Aaglund], we’re all here together now.

Can we start with how you approached playing Aaron in For Those In Peril – how did you shape him?

Paul’s such a wonderful writer; there’s so much there already in the script. And then the thing that was so wonderful about the whole process was it was an exploration with Paul, discovering things – we talked a lot. I’ve never had such a close relationship with a director before. So we established the reasons behind everything, the purpose and rationale to what Aaron was doing. Which gave me a really strong backbone around which we could improvise and explore when we began shooting.

And how did you relate to the rest of the cast – you’ve got Kate Dickie as your mum, and Nichola Burley as the girlfriend of Aaron’s recently deceased brother -  did you improvise with them, or keep it more structured?

Well, firstly Kate was just wonderful, she’s so lovely. We really felt, without wanting to sound too silly, that we clicked, and understood each other, and had this emotional attachment to the project, which brought us very close together. So working with her in rehearsals really brought that backbone of understanding to playing Aaron. She brought a perspective on him which really changed how I saw him – working with her defined Aaron. That need to be with her is the crux of Aaron, really. And Nichola [Burley] was just so wonderful to work with. We got two days to rehearse together up in Scotland and with Nichola we explored the scenes more and explored how far you can push that relationship.

Aaron’s quite a dark character – did you ever catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think ‘who’s this guy?’

Yeah, there’s the one scene where he’s got the red make-up on, and I forgot I had it on and went to the toilet and caught sight of myself! It’s like, yep, there he is! It was really invigorating doing it, it wasn’t an unpleasant experience going to those dark places; it was exciting.

And how did that contrast with Kevin Macdonald’s How I Live Now – was it a very different experience?

Well, in For Those In Peril, Aaron is so much on his own, whereas on How I Live Now, Eddie’s very much part of a family. And on How I Live Now, we kind of became a family on set – I felt like a big brother to Harley, Danny and Tom. It was about being together, and so it was much more about being a group, and my role in the group was looking after people. It was just a joy – that feeling of being a family is my strongest memory of How I Live Now. It was different – because of the nature of the part – with For Those In Peril. Me and Paul spoke for ages about the part of Aaron. I spoke with Kevin [Macdonald] before I got the part of Eddie and before filming and up until shooting in Wales, but with Paul, because Aaron’s on his own so much, we had a closeness all the time, because I was in all day, every day, all the time. I just physically spent more time with Paul. With How I Live Now, the best way of understanding the relationships was to hang out with the cast, whereas the best way of understanding Aaron in For Those In Peril was to spend time with the director, because the part in the story is so isolated. I learned so much from watching both of them.

And did you read How I Live Now before filming?

Absolutely, yeah. I think what’s great about the film is it’s true to the book in that it feels like the book, you know? The only way I can describe it to you is charged. There’s emotional intensity, and there’s love, and I’m so glad that came across in the script as well as the book. In the book Eddie is younger, but I think they are very similar.

And both Film4 films, of course…

Yes, I’m flying the flag for Film4!

 Will you have time to see anything here at Cannes?

No, unfortunately not, which is a real shame because it’s so exciting being somewhere where the focus is so entirely on film, and everyone’s here to show new work. It’s obviously amazing just to get your film into the festival but then there’s the big sense of nervousness over whether it will work out…

How I Live Now is out Autumn 2013, For Those In Peril premiered at Cannes in Critics Week on 18th May 2013

Katherine Butler on what Cannes and other festivals mean to Film4, in 2013 and over the years

Cannes is fast approaching, and very excitingly we’ll be launching two British films there this year – Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant and Paul Wright’s For Those In Peril – which have been selected for Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week respectively.

Both are low budget British films from directors at the early stages of their feature filmmaking careers. Paul is a first-time feature director, recently graduated from the NFTS and with a background in short films, including the BAFTA-winning Until the River Runs Red. The Selfish Giant is Clio’s second feature (and first fiction film) after her critically-acclaimed and award-winning Channel 4-backed The Arbor which merged documentary and actors to ground-breaking effect.

“From first short to international festival debut” 

Cannes can be a great launch pad for British directors, and for first or second-time filmmakers it’s often just the beginning of their story. A big part of our role here at Film4 is to support filmmakers throughout their filmmaking careers: from first short to international festival debut to established British auteur.

Just as our current slate features the next Mike Leigh and Ken Loach films, we are also funding and developing the latest films from other former Cannes debutantes. Lenny Abrahamson, whose second feature Garage won the CICAE Art and Essai Cinema Prize in Cannes in 2007, is currently in post-production on Frank.  Steve McQueen, who followed up the Camera d’Or-winning Hunger in 2008 with the multiple award-winning Shame, is currently in post-production on 12 Years A Slave, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Giamatti. In 2012, Ben Wheatley’s murderous caravanners were the talk of the Croisette with Sightseers, Ben’s third feature.  Less than twelve months later he’s finished production on A Field In England, and will later be starting work on US big-budget Freakshift. Casting our minds back ten years, David Mackenzie’s Young Adam played Un Certain Regard in 2003 – he is now in post-production on Starred Up, starring up-and-comer Jack O’Connell alongside Ben Mendelsohn and Rupert Friend.

Beyond Cannes….

However, our festival relationships extend well beyond Cannes. We work hard all year round to make sure each film finds its best possible way to audience and a big part of this begins with finding the right festival home to start each film’s journey. In the past 12 months, we have premiered films at Sundance, Toronto, Telluride, Venice, Edinburgh and played many many other festivals in between. This year will be no different – we have a larger than ever slate of films launching across 2013 featuring  a mix of both new voices and established directors working at all sorts of different levels.

To give you a quick flavour… Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited third film Under The Skin stars Scarlet Johansson and is based on Michel Faber’s cult novel.  And speaking of cult novels, Kevin Macdonald has brought Meg Rossoff’s award-winning How I Live Now to the big screen with Saoirse Ronan in the lead role. Anton Corbijn’s third film, an adaptation of John Le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rachel McAdams. And judging by the reaction to a sneak industry preview of a few seconds of footage of Richard Ayoade’s second film The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowksa, the world can’t wait for a follow-up to his first film Submarine.

As if this isn’t enough, we have several more feature debuts in the works including award-winning promo director Daniel Wolfe’s Catch Me Daddy, multi-award winning playwright and Bafta Single Drama winner Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming and Yann (Top Boy, Criminal Justice) Demange’s thriller ’71.

This huge wealth of British film-making talent brings a depth and breadth of vision and audience appeal which shows us what rude health the home-grown industry is currently in. Our Cannes debut film-makers Paul Wright and Clio Barnard epitomise the kind of talent we are honoured to work with here at Film4. Instinctive British filmmakers with truly distinctive voices, making films that are both intimate and cinematic, exploring stories that are of a certain place and time and yet speak to us all. Their films are beautiful, moving, powerful, poetic – more than that, they could only have been made by British filmmakers. Or rather, British auteurs. We feel very privileged to be premiering these two films in Cannes, and look forward to seeing the other British films playing there (Ruairi Robinson’s The Last Days On Mars, Mark Cousins’ A Story Of Children And Film, and Andrew Kötting’s Swandown). And here’s to a whole year of premieres across many different festivals with a superb slate of British talent.

Our partners at StudioCanal have announced today that they will co-finance See-Saw Films’ Macbeth. Directed by Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) and starring Michael Fassbender (Shame) & Oscar Winner Natalie Portman (Black Swan). Academy Award Winner Iain Canning and Emile Sherman of See-Saw Films (The King’s Speech, Shame) will produce.

Pre-Production will commence at the end of the year with principal photography in the UK in January 2014. See-Saw have developed the project alongside Film4, who will co-finance the production with StudioCanal. StudioCanal will distribute Macbeth in the UK, France & Germany and are handling International Sales, which will commence at the Cannes market.

StudioCanal Chairman and CEO Olivier Courson said “We are very pleased to be financing Macbeth which deftly brings contemporary themes to an iconic story. Justin Kurzel is a rare and distinct talent all of us at StudioCanal have admired for some time and are happy to be able to accompany him in this film. We are also thrilled to be working with the great producing team at See-Saw who have brought together such wonderful talent including Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman. We look forward to distributing the film in our European territories and commencing international sales this coming week at Cannes”

Iain Canning and Emile Sherman add “StudioCanal and Film4 are the perfect partners for us on Macbeth, having responded so quickly and passionately to the material. Like us, they are committed to Justin Kurzel’s energetic and modern themed take on a timeless story. With Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman, we have two of the finest actors of their generation, playing two of the most celebrated roles of all time. We couldn’t be more excited.”

Tessa Ross, Head of Film4, comments “We’re delighted to be partnering with our great colleagues at See-Saw and at StudioCanal on this wonderful project. Justin is an exceptional director and the prospect of his visceral and urgent work, together with the work of these two extraordinary performers, is very exciting.”

Macbeth is the story of a fearless warrior and inspiring leader brought low by ambition and desire. A thrilling interpretation of the dramatic realities of the times and a truthful reimagining of what wartime must have really been like for one of Shakespeare’s most famous and compelling characters, a story of all-consuming passion and ambition set in war-torn 11th Century Scotland.

This is the first of our blogs from the Development Team here at Film4, where we give you a bit of an insight into what cultural things we’ve seen and been impressed by over the past few months – this one covers the year so far, but we’ll aim to bring them more regularly from now on…

Since January we have watched a swathe of exciting new plays and films, and consumed copious amounts of new literature (at the London Book Fair). Other than our films (of course!), our British highlight of the Sundance Film Festival was Metro Manila directed by the brilliantly talented Sean Ellis. The film follows a young Filipino family from the countryside in the Philippines trying to make their way in the bustling metropolis of Metro Manila and is a deeply unexpected story that is as heart breaking as it is gripping. Fortunately, Sundance festival-goers felt the same, and gave it their audience award. Metro Manila recently had its UK premiere in Sundance London and similarly wowed audiences.

In this year’s Bafta nominations, we loved the hidden gem, I Am Nasrine directed by the supremely talented Tina Gharavi. The film tells the story of a young girl leaving Iran, and finding a new life with her brother in the UK. For those with a phobia of British Social Realism, this is not your average piece of small British cinema. This is heart breaking stuff that makes the most of the broad canvas of cinema, and Tina is a hugely exciting new talent.

On the theatre side, we all raved about Complicite’s new and most ambitious production to date, The Master And Margarita, based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel of the same name. The production, staged at the Barbican, is a work of overwhelming brilliance that combines video art, music, daring performances and choreography to extravagant and sublime effect. It was a triumph of the stage finally capturing the polyvalent nuances of one of World Literature’s most beguiling works. At the Royal Court, we all loved Bruce Norris’ The Low Road – a witty and audacious exploration of the impact of Capitalism. Dominic Cooke’s final production at the Court as Artistic Director bristles with vibrancy and dynamism. On the new writing front, we enjoyed Arinze Kene’s new play God’s Property at the Soho Theatre. Arinze presents a bold and original look at race relations in 80s London, realised with humour and raw performances.

At the NFTS (National Film and Television School) Show, we enjoyed new shorts by Gabriel Gauchet, Cathy Brady and Louis Paxton. Gabriel Gauchet’s Z1 is a darkly compelling story about an unconventional family had us gripping the arms of our seats. Cathy Brady’s Wasted has beautiful performances as well as a strikingly heart wrenching story about a young girl lost in her life. Louis Paxton’s Musical Star was nothing short of a treat at the end of the day; the NFTS’s first musical in 20 years. The NFTS consistently is the home of exciting new filmmakers coming through the UK. We are or have worked with so many of them over the years: Yann Demange, Clio Barnard, Sarah Gavron and Paul Wright to name but a few…

The literary world is a breeding ground for new and original writing talent for adaptation as well as screenwriting. This month we headed to the London Book Fair, where we met some wonderful people from Canongate, Random House, Faber and Granta. While the Fair was happening in Earl’s Court, Granta issued their list of 20 brightest young writers. It is a staggering list of brilliant literary achievement. Among them, we particularly love Ned Beauman’s brilliant dynamic new voice as heard in Boxer, Beetle and The Teleportation Accident. Adam Foulds’ first novel, The Quickening Maze, about John Clare’s time in the asylum was a staggering work. Steven Hall’s Raw Sharks Texts is an extraordinary work of the imagination, and conceptual shark making! Zadie Smith of course reappears, but her dazzling voice of wit and piercing insight is very much still alive in her new book, NW.

At Sundance London, our brains were twisted by Shane Carruth’s deeply arresting follow up to his sci-fi classic, Primer. Upstream Color cannot be easily summarised so we will leave it to you to watch and be beguiled. It melds a Terrence Malick perspective with scenes that are redolent of David Lynch. Yet Shane is very much a genius unto himself. Of the Sundance shorts, we completely loved Whiplash directed by Damien Chazelle. A brilliantly contained comedy of desperation in the world of a music college rehearsal room. Obviously, it goes without saying Kibwe Tavares’ brilliant Film4-backed film Jonah was one of the many highlights of the short film section.