Empty Crib has big ambitions. Couple Ivy Thomas (as writer and producer) and Tom Wolt (as director) are creating this horror film with international appeal. “An elevated horror-thriller based on real psychological trauma and an ancient evil acknowledged by the church” is their shortest description of the project. This “mature horror drama”, as they call it, was shot in March 2021 over five weeks in the cities of Erkelenz and Aachen in the region of North Rhine-Westphalia.

“We produced this film despite COVID-19 and shot it during lockdown; we made it with love, sweat and tears. We pulled it through the German flood catastrophe of July 2021, during which we lost our home and our office, but not our passion or determination,” say Thomas and Wolt. Owing to these challenges and a considerable loss of money, the movie is only now in post-production and is awaiting its release at the end of this year. It has been completely self-financed by the duo, who raised a budget of around €450,000 with their own production company, Pathfinder Studios Filmproduktion.

As mentioned above, while Wolt is responsible for directing the film, Thomas wrote the script and produced it. Wolt has already forged a career in filmmaking, and has so far focused on adverts and corporate films. He has directed a series of shorts, including Dead Line in 2016, which travelled to several international festivals. Thomas, Wolt’s real-life wife, is an experienced businesswoman who graduated in Media Management and has written several novels. She was short-listed for an award for best German debut author in 2016.

Their first feature-length film tells the story of a young mother who loses her child and subsequently struggles with the trauma of the event. She suspects that the child's death might not be of natural causes, but may well involve supernatural powers. The official synopsis goes: “Each year, more than 15,000 children die as infants. So did Adam. One year after the incident and the breakup of her marriage, Beth still hears her baby cry at night, trapped in a loop of pain and terror. Desperate, she asks her ex-husband for help – only to realise that he has already moved on. As they retrace what happened, a tense and twisted story unfolds on the fine line between superstition and psychology, posing the question: who is to blame?”

Empty Crib brings together a cast and crew that is 75% female and completely European. The casting was done in the UK, and the film was shot in English, in order to target a broader audience from the get-go. One of the main roles is played by Sophia La Porta, who recently starred in the Hulu series Four Weddings and a Funeral, the series Flack, 4Stories and The Gold as well as the thriller Censor [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Prano Bailey-Bond
ficha de la película] by Prano Bailey-Bond, among other projects. The second protagonist of the film is played by Naomi Battrick, who will soon be seen in a leading role in the feature Anna by James Strong, opposite actor Ciarán Hinds. She has also appeared in Danis Tanovic’s The Postcard Killings [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película], Martin Koolhoven’s Brimstone [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
Q&A: Martin Koolhoven
ficha de la película] and Stephen Frears’ A Very English Scandal [+lee también:
crítica
ficha de la serie]. Moreover, she has a leading regular role in the series Crossing Lines for NBC.

Empty Crib is a production by Pathfinder Studios Filmproduktion. It doesn't yet have a distributor or sales agent attached. The release is planned for the end of this year.

In collaboration with