DIARY
Today Edited by Sarah Cooper
sarah.cooper@
screendaily.com
Partly cloudy high 70°
Tomorrow
Partly cloudy high 70°
Breakfast of champions
BY WENDY MITCHELL With pre-Cannes stress levels peaking, it was perfect timing last week for some bucks fizz (or cof- fee) and bacon sandwiches at the Met Bar in London. Screen hosted a relaxed pre-festival networking breakfast for the UK industry, where attendees speculated on hot market titles and swapped gossip about the best party invites and their hopes for sunshine after a wintry spring in London. Sixteen Films’ Rebecca O’Brien was one belle of the breakfast, discussing the whisky knowledge she gained working on Ken Loach’s Competi- tion title The Angels’ Share.
MORE FROM CANNES...
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Return of the Living Dead
George A Romero’s 1968 zombie classic Night Of The Living Dead serves as the inspiration for Simon West Productions’ $7m 3D animated reboot, starring Tom Sizemore. The project transposes the action from rural Pennsylvania to New York City and moves events to the present day. Oh, and now the gore arrives in
3D, which appealed to West, the UK director of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2. His firm created The Graphic Film Company, whose work on motion- capture so impressed Giant Studios of Avatar fame that a collaboration has sprung up. West takes a producer credit on the movie and ceded directing duties to Zeb De Soto. “We can do edgier stuff [than the US majors]. It
From man in a van to one in the can
opens up a whole new type of film- making,” West says. Larry Meyers will be in Cannes
hoping to secure international sales on the project for his newly formed company, Meyers Media Group, off the back of a promo. Jeremy Kay
BY SARAH COOPER After seven years attending the Cannes Film Festival — during which time he launched the ‘Cannes in a Van’ mobile cinema as well as winning the festival’s short film challenge — UK direc- tor Dan Hartley is finally here with his first feature, Lad — a low- budget Yorkshire-set coming-of- age story about a boy coping with the death of his father through a friendship with a park ranger — for which Hartley is hoping to attract distribution. The former Harry Potter video
Mamma mia!
BY SARAH COOPER Being seven months’ pregnant and editing the diary page out of Cannes do not exactly go hand in hand as I’m constantly bombarded with news of parties I’ll be too tired to attend, cocktails I won’t be able to drink and sushi canapés I won’t be able to eat. But as it’s my duty to tell you
about the coolest venues in Cannes, I’d better start with the Terrazza Martini at the Plage Gray D’Albion, which is hosting a string of glamorous events during the festival, including a party for Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways (Friday) and a soirée for Nastassja Kinski to celebrate the screening of Roman Polanski’s Tess in Cannes Classics (May 25) — all washed down with some delicious Martini cocktails. Damn it.
n 14 Screen International at Cannes May 16, 2012
playback operator also plans to take the film on a tour of UK national parks in the autumn (in his van, of course) with his own lit- tle lad, his three-month-old son, in tow as a lucky charm.
Clockwise from top left: producers Marc Samuelson and Sarah Curtis; the BFI’s Isabel Davis with Independent’s Karina Gechtman; Antonio Salas,Hilary Davis and Stephen Kelliher of Bankside Films; The Weinstein Company’s NegeenYazdi and Salt’s SamanthaHorley; producers Paul Raphael and RebeccaO’Brien
Meet the debutants RUFUS NORRIS, BROKEN
shots and car chases, but I do know how to work with actors. So it was important to choose a film that had a strong emotional heartbeat which would require fantastic performances.
Rufus Norris
Acclaimed UK theatre director Rufus Norris’ directorial debut Broken has been chosen as tomorrow’s opening film of Critics’ Week. Cillian Murphy, Tim Roth and newcomer Eloise Lawrence star in the BBC Films-backed feature about a young girl who witnesses a violent assault. Wild Bunch is handling sales.
Is it nerve-wracking to be screening your first feature in Cannes? We have had a mad dash to finish it on time but it’s a lovely place to kick off, particularly for a first film. On opening night in the theatre, it’s terribly nerve-wracking because there are still a thousand things that can go wrong and the actors have actually got to get up there and do it. At least in film, it’s finished, I can’t recut it in the interval!
The film is based on a novel by Daniel Clay. Did you immediately visualise it on the screen when you read it? Yes, I did. As a first film it was appealing because it’s a fairly contained domestic environment, a small neighbourhood. I have no experience of doing helicopter
Your lead is 12-year-old Eloise Lawrence. Was casting this role a challenge? We met 850 girls and Eloise came along at the last minute. She hasn’t done anything before, but there is an openness and naivety in her character’s spirit, so I didn’t want her to have that feeling of someone who has done a lot of work. She is coming to Cannes and is fluent in French, so she will probably get along a lot better than me.
Have you taken inspiration from other film-makers when it comes to your cinematic style? There is a middle ground between Ken Loach and Danny Boyle which is not an incompatible place to be. I’ve grown up on Ken Loach’s films and I think they are fantastic and beautiful but there is a slightly more expansive theatrical side to Danny Boyle’s work, which I really enjoy. My favourite film is Festen by Thomas Vinterberg. Shot for nothing, but with wonderful actors, a brilliant story and a real energy behind the camera. I kind of hope I bump into him on the beach.
What was the hardest thing about making the film? Getting the bloody money together. We nearly went down just before we started prep. Once we actually got to the starting line it was hard work, but there were no crises.
Sarah Cooper
Dan Hartley on the set of Lad
Broken
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