Cannes Docs

Runtime: 80'

Expected release: September, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €364.283 (80% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Sales Agent, Gap Financing, Buyers, Festivals

Synopsis:

Young Borja is growing up in Castellon, a small town in Spain, where the tradition of bullfighting weighs heavily on his shoulders. His grandad, Matias, pins his own unfulfilled dreams of becoming a professional bullfighter onto his grandchild. Like most underprivileged kids in his town, Borja doesn’t see a future beyond orange fields, farming, fishing and bullfighting.

Director’s profile:

Inma de Reyes (she/her) is a Spanish film director based in Edinburgh, where she graduated in MFA Film Directing. Her work has featured at The Skinny, MUBI, BBC Scotland and Screenskills. Inma is a Chicken & Egg Pictures grantee and Dok.Incubator 2022 participant. She recently directed ‘Isabel’s Independence’ for BBC Scotland, ‘Vivir Bailando’ for Screen Scotland and The Scottish Documentary Institute and ‘Eighty Serbian Dinars’ for FilmArt. The Boy And The Suit Of Lights is her first feature.

Producer’s profile:

Aimara Reques is the founder of Aconite Productions, an award-winning company based in Scotland dedicated to the production of high-quality creative documentaries for international distribution. She has over 30 years’ experience in the film industry in the UK and has collaborated with a number of renowned directors and producers from the UK and internationally. She was the leading producer and co-writer of the ambitious Victor Kossakovsky’s AQUARELA which premiered at Venice 2018 and was shortlisted for the Oscars in 2020 and her most recent film, Electric Malady, was nominated for a BAFTA this 2023. Aimara is a winner of two BAFTA Scotland Awards; a Fox Searchlight Award; an Amnesty International Media Award; and the Golden Star Award from El Gouna Film Festival.

Runtime: 85'

Expected release: September, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €195.697 (75% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Sales agents, Distributors, Festivals

Synopsis:

After the Iranian Revolution, a movie collector in Tehran hid thousands of films to prevent their destruction by the new Islamic regime. Despite arrest and torture, he refused to give up his secret. His story of resistance is told by the boy who became his partner in crime, recollected years later from exile in London. A moving and inspiring autobiography about the subversive power of celluloid dreams.

Director’s profile:

Ehsan Khoshbakht is an Iranian filmmaker, curator and author, based in London. His debut feature Filmfarsi (2019), about the lost Iranian cinema of the Shah’s era, was released in the US by Gunpowder/Criterion, and screened at over 50 film festivals and cinematheques around the world. He has also made several archive documentaries for BBC Persian, including Duke Ellington in Esfahan, which was selected for Telluride. Ehsan is co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the world’s premier festival for film history and restoration. He regularly programmes seasons around the world, most recently at Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon, MoMA in New York, the Viennale in Vienna, Cinemateket in Copenhagen, and Filmoteca Catalunya in Barcelona. He is the author and editor of several books about cinema, jazz and architecture.

Producer’s profile:

After decades of experience in the film and TV industry, Mary Bell and Adam Dawtrey founded Bofa Productions in 2013 to make cinema documentaries in Scotland. Their credits include A Story of Children and Film (Mark Cousins, 2013), Antonia Bird: From EastEnders to Hollywood (Susan Kemp, 2016), Stockholm My Love (Cousins, 2016), The Eyes of Orson Welles (Cousins, 2018), Iorram (Alastair Cole, 2021), The Story of Looking (Cousins, 2021) and La Sagrada Familia (Borja Alcalde, 2022). They are currently in production with Celluloid Underground (Ehsan Khoshbakht, 2023) and A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (Cousins, 2024). Mary Bell was previously deputy managing director of Hat Trick Productions, where she produced hit TV shows including Father Ted and Have I Got News For You. She won an Oscar for her short film Work Experience. Adam Dawtrey was previously European Editor of Variety.

Runtime: 88'

Expected release: August, 2023

Production stage: Completed

Budget: €455.000 (100% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, Distributors, Buyers

Synopsis:

In the 1970s, beneath the murky waters of Loch Ness, lay a world of violent rivalry, fakes’n’ fraud, sexual shenanigans and monster egos. Cameras peered into the depths – but the real action happened on the banks. The Loch was a natural history frontier – even Attenborough was impressed. Flimsy evidence became scientific fact, frustration turned to fakery – but the deeper you go, the darker it gets.

Director’s profile:

From swearing, to kilts, to accents to…. Scotch pies – John MacLaverty has been writing and directing documentaries in Scotland – and about Scotland – for over 25 years. Though born in Belfast, he’s made long form and entertaining films that celebrate Caledonian cultural life, with wit and stylistic flair. With his partner, John co-runs Indelible Telly, a new(ish) boutique production company who’ve been commissioned by BBC and others to produced film about the Scottish newspaper industry, about the travails of tourism, the scandal of anthrax testing in rural Scotland. Loch Ness, They Created a Monster heralds his arrival into the world of feature docs, and the combination of an epic subject, and epic setting and an epic era, makes for an epic debut.

Producer’s profile:

Bafta winner John Archer runs Hopscotch Films who specialise in international feature documentaries. Recent premieres include Mark Cousins’ My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Telluride ‘22); Jono McLeod’s My Old School (Sundance, HotDocs ’22) which opened in US and UK cinemas last summer; Mark Cousins’ Story of Film a New Generation (Cannes ’21) and Women Make Film (Venice, TIFF,) which was awarded the inaugural Innovation in Storytelling Award from European Film Academy. Other recent feature docs from great directors are: The Ballad of a Great Disordered Heart, Dùthchas (EIFF 2022), Eminent Monsters, Make Me Up, Arcadia, Glasgow Love & Apartheid, and Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War. Hopscotch Films are co-producing Beast with Denmark’s Bullitt Films and Sweden’s Plattform Productions and recently combined forces with Channel X to produce comedy and drama together from Scotland.

Runtime: 90', 60'

Expected release: June, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €380.000 (100% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Strategic Guidance

Synopsis:

Tish Murtha was a photographer whose images of people on the margins of society in Thatcher’s Britain challenged and documented the inequality she herself had suffered. Despite early acclaim Tish was unable to make a living from photography and she died in poverty. Tish’s daughter Ella explores why she did not receive her due and what her work tells us about the value placed on working-class communities.

Director’s profile:

Paul Sng is a bi-racial British Chinese filmmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland whose work focuses on people who challenge the status quo. His work has been broadcast on television and screened internationally. His feature film credits include DISPOSSESSION and POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHE (winner of BIFA 2021 Best Documentary, BIFA 2021 Raindance Discovery Award). He is a BAFTA Breakthrough 2022/23 artist.

Producer’s profile:

Jen Corcoran is a creative producer based in Newcastle, UK. Jen established Freya Films with a focus on thoughtful, contemporary storytelling and narratives from the margins across both documentary and fiction. Jen’s BIFA-nominated documentary NASCONDINO [HIDE AND SEEK] (BFI Doc Society Fund) premiered In Competition at LFF 2021 and CPH:DOX 2022 while her previous work has played at Tribeca, Sheffield DocFest and BFI Flare among others. Jen led award-winning regional development programme Tees Valley Screen between 2019-2020 and is a freelance film programmer and lecturer.