28/03/2006

The UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund (NCF), created to encourage unique ideas, innovative approaches and new voices, has just invested a total of £1.67m (€2.4m) in three new feature films directed by Sarah Gavron, Pawel Pawlikovski, Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger.

Gavron, whose first feature film was the 2003 drama This Little Life, is now preparing her second feature for Ruby Films’ Alison Owen (Sylvia [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). Her new drama, Seven Seas, is co-funded by Film Four in collaboration with the NCF, which is investing £650,000 (€943,079).

Pawlikovski’s The Restraint of Beats (see news) – starring Rhys Ifans, Eddie Marsan (Vera Drake [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Ben Whishaw (Perfume) and Warren Clarke (A Clockwork Orange) – is being produced by Tanya Seghatchian (see Cineuropa interview) for Apocalypso Pictures.

Currently in production, the film is an adaptation of a Magnus Mills novel about two Scottish labourers and their English foreman who are sent to build a fence on a God-forsaken hillside in the North of England and end up burying more than just fence posts. The film was co-financed by BBC Films, the Wales Creative IP Fund and the NCF that invested £650,000 (€943,079). Worldwide sales are being handled by Capitol Films.

Sparkle (see news) is the third feature film from writer/director team Hunter and Hunsinger (Lawless Heart). The film, which just received £337,600 (€489,691) from the NCF on top of £15,467 (€22,434) in pre-production finance from the UK FC’s Development Fund, is being produced by Martin Pope and Michael Rose for Magic Light Pictures.

This comedy is currently shooting on the Isle of Man was co-financed by Isle of Man Film, Baker Street/Take 9 Partnership, North West Vision and BBC Films. It stars Bob Hoskins, Stockard Channing (The West Wing), and Lesley Manville (Vera Drake). Vertigo will handle UK distribution and Beyond Films, international sales.