Emily
We’re delighted that five Ingenious-backed films have been nominated for the National Film Awards. These nominations honour creative vision, attention to detail and commitment to storytelling. Congratulations to all the nominees.
You can register your profile and vote here.
Best Actress 2023
Jennifer Saunders (Allelujah)
Emma Mackey (Emily)
Best Actor 2023
Rory Kinnear (Bank of Dave)
Best Supporting Actor 2023
Paul Kaye (Bank of Dave)
Best Supporting Actress 2023 sponsored by Youth & Earth
Phoebe Dynevor (Bank of Dave)
Best Thriller 2023 sponsored by Ivy Niche
Unwelcome
Best Independent Film 2023 sponsored by Telephononos
Bank of Dave
Best Screenplay 2023
Frances O’Connor (Emily)
Outstanding Performance 2023
Bally Gill (Allelujah)
Best Feature Film 2023
Emily
Bank of Dave
Best Producer 2023
Iain Canning | Joanna Laurie | Emile Sherman | Christophe Spadone | Florian Zeller (The Son)
Karl Hall | Neil Jones | Piers Tempest | Matt Williams (Bank of Dave)
Ingenious Media is proud to announce that 4 British films produced by investee companies managed by Ingenious have received British Independent Film Award nominations.
Emily
Best Lead Performance: Emma Mackey
Best Supporting Performance: Fionn Whitehead
Best Ensemble Performance: Ensemble including Amelia Gething, Emma Mackey, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Fionn Whitehead, Alexandra Dowling, Gemma Jones, Adrian Dunbar
The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) sponsored by BBC Film: Frances O’Connor
The Lost King
Best Lead Performance: Sally Hawkins
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts
Best Editing: Joanna Crickmay
The Phantom of the Open
Best Music Supervision: Phil Canning
Well done to all nominees.
Ingenious Media is proud to announce that five films produced by investee companies managed by Ingenious have been selected for the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.
The Son: produced by Neddy Dean Productions. Adapted by Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton (The Father, Dangerous Liaisons), from Zeller’s acclaimed stage play, Hugh Jackman (The Greatest Showman, X-Men) stars as Peter whose busy life with his new partner is thrown into disarray when his ex-wife Kate, played by Laura Dern (Marriage Story, Jurassic World), arrives with their troubled and distant teenage son, setting the family on a dangerous collision course. The film will hold its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival and will then receive a Gala Presentation in Toronto.
Butcher’s Crossing: produced by Conqueror Productions. Based on the seminal novel by John Edward Williams, Butcher’s Crossing is a frontier epic that follows a young Harvard drop-out into the Colorado wilderness as he joins a team of buffalo hunters in search of a mythic herd of buffalo. Little does he know, the journey will put his life and sanity at risk. Detailing a gripping and largely untold chapter in American history, Butcher’s Crossing is a riveting commentary on human nature, masculinity, and man’s relationship to his natural environment. Starring Nicolas Cage (The Rock, Leaving Las Vegas) the film is directed by Gabe Polsky and will receive its world premiere as a Gala Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.
Allelujah: produced by Great Bison Productions. Richard Eyre (Notes on a Scandal, Iris) directs an adaptation of the stage play written by Alan Bennett (The Lady in the Van, The Madness of King George). Set in a Yorkshire geriatric hospital Judi Dench (Belfast, Shakespeare in Love) and Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous, Death on the Nile) star in this spirited homage to the idiosyncrasies of old age and the fortitude of health care workers. The film will receive its world premiere as a Special Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.
The Lost King: produced by Magaritz Productions stars Sally Hawkins (The Phantom of the Open, The Shape of Water) and Steve Coogan (Stan and Ollie, Philomena). In 2012, having been lost for over 500 years, the remains of King Richard III were discovered beneath a carpark in Leicester. The search had been orchestrated by amateur historian Philippa Langley, whose unrelenting research had been met with incomprehension by her friends and family and with scepticism by experts and academics. Directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons) this is the life-affirming true story of a woman who refused to be ignored and who took on the country’s most eminent historians, forcing them to think again about one of the most controversial kings in England’s history. The film will receive its world premiere as a Special Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.
Emily: produced by Popara Films. First time feature film director Frances O’Connor brings the life of Emily Bronte to the big screen with Emma Mackey (Death of the Nile, Sex Education) playing the eponymous writer of Wuthering Heights. O’Connor has assembled a stellar ensemble cast including Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Mr. Malcolm’s List, The Invisible Man), Fionn Whitehead (The Duke, Dunkirk) and Adrian Dunbar (Line of Duty, The Crying Game). The film will hold its world premiere in the competitive Platform section at the Toronto Film Festival.
Ingenious backed Crimes of the Future from the legendary director David Cronenberg will hold its world premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, the story is set in the not too distant future in a time when humankind has learned to alter their biological makeup – some naturally and some surgically.
In an interview with Deadline, asked about going back to Cannes following the controversy surrounding his 1996 film Crash, the director said “Well, I’m not nervous. I’m looking forward to it because you make a film to have people react to it. And, as usual — and I’ve said this many times — I’m not making a movie to shock people or assault them. I’m saying, “These are things I’ve noticed. These are ideas I’ve had. These are dreams that have troubled me. I’m showing them to you. You can interpret them as you wish. I just think you maybe would be interested in experiencing these things as I have experienced them.” That’s my approach, and you get a huge variety of responses. “
Cronenberg has been an inspiration to filmmakers and audiences worldwide with films such as The Fly, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Crimes of the Future will be released in France following its Cannes premiere and in June in the United States.
Two Ingenious-backed films, both comedy-dramas and both based on real-life stories, have been enjoying critical and box office success in recent weeks.
The first, The Duke, starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, tells the story of Kempton Bunton, a 60 year old self-educated taxi-driver, who in 1961 steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London in what might best be described as a philanthropic heist. Set partly in industrial Newcastle upon Tyne and partly in early ‘60s London, the film is already being cited as a comic masterpiece.
Jim Broadbent gives the performance of his life in a movie which, sadly, was the last feature film to be directed by the great Roger Michell, who died in September 2021. It was awarded five stars by The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2020. The film’s theatrical release was delayed by Covid but has been a great hit with the public since it opened in February.
The second film, Phantom of the Open, directed by Craig Roberts, stars Mark Rylance as Maurice Flitcroft, an amateur golfer, dreamer and unrelenting optimist, who succeeded in gaining entry to the British Open Golf Championship Qualifying Competition in 1976 where he shot the worst round in Open history, infuriating the golfing establishment and becoming a folk hero in the process. Also starring Sally Hawkins and Rhys Ifans, the film is remarkable for Mark Rylance’s perfectly pitched performance as the defiantly hopeful amateur Flitcroft, a role which the actor plays straight to great comic effect.
Phantom was released in March in the UK and, like The Duke, is proving immensely popular. This is a relief for the whole industry. Over the last two years the pandemic has cast a large shadow over the theatrical box-office for film, with cinemas closed for long periods and audiences evidently reluctant to return other than for occasional super-hero Hollywood movies like The Batman and action-thriller blockbusters like the James Bond film No Time to Die.
But the tide is now turning, and it is high quality, quintessentially British films like The Duke and Phantom of the Open that are currently proving instrumental in attracting nervous audiences back to broader cinematic fare. Ingenious is delighted to have worked with long established partners the BFI, BBC Film, Pathe, eOne, Cornerstone, Baby Cow and Screen Yorkshire to bring these two films to the public. Both films will shortly be released in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics.
On 23rd March it was announced that the NFTS Board of Governors had appointed Sophie Turner Laing, former CEO of Endemol Shine and MD of Sky, as its new incoming Chair. She becomes the School’s first female chair, succeeding Ingenious founder Patrick McKenna, who will step down at the end of his final term in August, having held the post since 2013.
The NFTS, which has some 600 students studying a wide variety of industry focused MA courses, Diplomas and Certificates covering the whole screen sector, from film and TV to animation and games, has regularly featured in The Hollywood Reporter’s annual ranking of the world’s top ten film schools. It has been described by The Guardian as the world’s best film school, reflecting the fact that the School’s graduates are invariably snapped up by industry on graduation, demonstrating the unique strength of the School’s distinctive teaching model, which is strongly influenced by commercial partners. These include the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, Disney and Amazon.
Patrick’s leadership of the School has been transformational. It has greatly expanded its educational footprint, with the opening of state-of-the-art equipped premises in Beaconsfield and new teaching facilities in Glasgow (NFTS Scotland), Leeds (NFTS Leeds) and Cardiff (NFTS Wales). The number of students taught has more than doubled, whilst the progressive change in the School’s gender and ethnic balance within the student body has set the standard for improving performance on diversity in recruitment.
Ingenious Media is proud to present two films in the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, running from 6 to 15 July, moved from its usual May berth due to the pandemic.
The first, Flag Day, is directed by Sean Penn and stars his daughter Dylan in a breakout role, together with Penn himself, Josh Brolin and Katheryn Winnick. Flag Day will hold its World Premiere in the Official Competition. Following its selection announcement, MGM acquired North American distribution rights and will release the film via its marketing-distribution joint venture United Artists Releasing in August this year. Flag Day is based on Jennifer Vogel’s memoir Flim-Flam: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life. It tells the story of the author’s coming of age, played by Dylan Penn, over two decades while navigating a fraught relationship with her beloved, career criminal father.
The second Ingenious-backed production will screen in the new Cannes Première section. Oliver Stone’s new feature documentary about the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass, is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg and Donald Sutherland and includes a team of forensics, medical and ballistics experts, historians and witnesses. The documentary comes thirty years after Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning drama JFK and will feature recently declassified evidence and testimony in relation to the President’s 1963 assassination. Altitude Film Distribution will release the film in the UK and Ireland.
Ingenious Media is proud to announce that three films produced by investee companies managed by Ingenious have been selected for the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.
Ingenious is proud to congratulate Renée Zellweger on her Academy Award® for Best Actress for her role as Judy Garland. Judy was produced by Confit Productions, an investee company managed by Ingenious, with partners Pathe, BBC Films and Calamity Films.
The Oscar® win completes a busy awards season for the film during which Renée Zellweger won every major award for Best Actress, including the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild award and the BAFTA award.
To date the film has achieved over $39m in Worldwide Box Office, including $24m in North America, where it was released by LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions.
We are proud to announce that two films produced by investee companies managed by Ingenious will showcase at the forthcoming Berlin Film Festival:
