March 30, 2021

David Parfitt, Gabrielle Tana and Thomas Benski talk outlook for financing, distribution, festivals

93CE4A

The producers of The Father, The Dig and Mogul Mowgli, all nominated for the outstanding British film Bafta, come together to discuss the current UK film-financing landscape and the outlook for festivals, distribution and exhibition over the next 18 months

This year’s Bafta nominations suggested a fresh approach in comparison to recent years — including a stronger focus on UK talent, and not just because the outstanding British film category has been expanded to 10 nominees. Screen International invited three of the nominated producers — all based in the UK — to share their thoughts on a raft of current issues in the industry.

Gabrielle Tana is the founder of Magnolia Mae and is nominated for Netflix-backed historical drama The Dig, directed by Simon Stone and adapted by Moira Buffini from the John Preston novel. She will shortly be heading to Australia where she is one of the producers, alongside Brian Grazer, on Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives, about the Thai football players trapped in an underground cave. She is also working with Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz on his first English-language film, Queen’s Gambit. Her credits include The Duchess(2008), Coriolanus (2011), The Invisible Woman (2013), Philomena (2013) and The White Crow (2018).

Trademark Films’ David Parfitt, producer of The Father, has worked on awards contenders stretching back to his films with Kenneth Branagh in the 1980s and ’90s, among them Henry V (1989), as well as Nicholas Hytner’s The Madness Of King George (1994), John Madden’s Shakespeare In Love (1998) and Simon Curtis’s My Week With Marilyn (2011). Former Bafta chairman Parfitt has been “sitting out” 2020 and early 2021 as far as physical production is concerned, but has a packed development slate including a “returnable TV series with some cast attached”, which could shoot by the end of the year, and a couple of projects with directors he has worked with before — but he is keeping the details to himself for now.

Pulse Films CEO Thomas Benski produced Mogul Mowgli, directed by Bassam Tariq and co-written by Tariq and star Riz Ahmed. The company’s eclectic range of film and TV credits include everything from Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016) and Nick Cave documentary 20,000 Days On Earth (2014), to Nicolas Cage truffle-hunting drama Pig, which is expected to be released in the coming months. Pulse is preparing a second series of TV drama Gangs Of London. The company is also producing Olivia Wilde’s feature Perfect, about US Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug.

By: Geoffrey Macnab

Continue Reading at screendaily.com