15/05/2015 - CANNES 2015: The projects are to receive £100,000 each, plus £10,000 of development funding

The world’s biggest film market is under way, and Film London’s Microwave scheme is in the mix, announcing two commissions at Cannes. Writer-director Faye Gilbert and producer Yaw Basoah’s Kill Her Witch, which follows two sisters as they run for their lives across hostile territory in a dystopian future, has been commissioned to be a feature film and has been awarded £100,000 in production funding and £10,000 in development monies. The same amounts have been awarded to writer-director Sebastian Godwin and producer Hugo Godwin’s The Visitor, a psychological horror exploring family relationships. Both movies are expected to go into production this year, and for the first time, completed projects can access up to an additional £25,000 in funding to support their distribution and exhibition.

The Microwave scheme, supported by the British Film Institute, BBC Films and Creative Skillset, requires filmmakers to produce a film for up to £150,000, with the teams raising the remaining finance. The two projects were chosen from among 160 applications.

Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said, “With Kill Her Witch and The Visitor, we’ve selected two superb films that demonstrate exactly the kind of original and distinctive vision we look for, and in the case of the Godwin brothers, it is particularly heartening to be working with filmmakers whose talent we’ve nurtured through our shorts schemes. Our ambition is to deliver exciting new talent into the industry, so while we continue working with the two successful teams, we will also be scouring the capital for more talented storytellers for the next round of Microwave.”