Bleecker Street has nabbed North American rights to first-time feature director Andrew Cumming’s Stone Age-set horror thriller The Origin.
The film from Sony Pictures’ Stage 6 had its world premiere at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for five British Independent Film Awards, winning one in the best breakthrough performance category for Safia Oakley-Green (Sherwood, Extraordinary). The script was written by Ruth Greenberg (Run), with Escape Plan Productions’ Oliver Kassman (Saint Maud) producing.
Bleecker Street is planning a fall/winter theatrical release, it unveiled on Tuesday as the Cannes Film Festival market was set to open.
Set more than 45,000 years in the past, the movie tells the story of a gang of early humans who band together in search of a new land. “When they suspect a malevolent, mystical, being is hunting them down, the clan is forced to confront a horrifying danger they never imagined,” according to a plot description.
The film from Sony Pictures’ Stage 6 had its world premiere at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for five British Independent Film Awards, winning one in the best breakthrough performance category for Safia Oakley-Green (Sherwood, Extraordinary). The script was written by Ruth Greenberg (Run), with Escape Plan Productions’ Oliver Kassman (Saint Maud) producing.
Bleecker Street is planning a fall/winter theatrical release, it unveiled on Tuesday as the Cannes Film Festival market was set to open.
Set more than 45,000 years in the past, the movie tells the story of a gang of early humans who band together in search of a new land. “When they suspect a malevolent, mystical, being is hunting them down, the clan is forced to confront a horrifying danger they never imagined,” according to a plot description.
- 5/16/2023
- by Georg Szalai
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Hope Dickson Leach, BAFTA-winning director of acclaimed Toronto, Rotterdam and London festival selection “The Levelling,” has embarked upon a hybrid adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s iconic novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Leach and co-writer Vlad Butucea have transposed the story from London to Victorian Edinburgh. The story follows Gabriel Utterson as he enters a world of dark duplicity to uncover the identity of the mysterious Mr. Hyde and the hold he has over Utterson’s old friend Dr Jekyll. The adaptation has been developed with theater dramaturg Rosie Kellagher. The casting will be revealed imminently.
The adaptation will kick off as a theatrical live experience, where audiences will enter a live filmset built within the atmospheric setting of Edinburgh’s historic Leith Theatre, over Feb. 25, 26 and 27, 2022. Following the final performance on Feb. 27, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” will be livestreamed to selected Scottish cinemas.
Leach and co-writer Vlad Butucea have transposed the story from London to Victorian Edinburgh. The story follows Gabriel Utterson as he enters a world of dark duplicity to uncover the identity of the mysterious Mr. Hyde and the hold he has over Utterson’s old friend Dr Jekyll. The adaptation has been developed with theater dramaturg Rosie Kellagher. The casting will be revealed imminently.
The adaptation will kick off as a theatrical live experience, where audiences will enter a live filmset built within the atmospheric setting of Edinburgh’s historic Leith Theatre, over Feb. 25, 26 and 27, 2022. Following the final performance on Feb. 27, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” will be livestreamed to selected Scottish cinemas.
- 12/16/2021
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Edinburgh International Film Festival
EDINBURGH -- As an example of issue-driven community film-making, "Trouble Sleeping", an ensemble drama "based on the experiences of members of Edinburgh's refugee community," is a respectable effort that almost transcends tight budgetary limitations. Intentions are admirable, and there's much to like about the way we're taken into the tough daily lives of asylum-seekers in Scotland's picturesque capital. But in their keenness to do justice to a wide spectrum of cultures and topics, the filmmakers bite off more than they can comfortably chew. This results in a choppy, slightly unfocused multi-strander.
Festivals specializing in human-rights issues should take note. Otherwise, the picture is too uneven and technically rough-edged to gain much access.
The screenwriters should perhaps have concentrated on the closest thing "Trouble Sleeping" (an odd title, by the way) has got to a protagonist: thirtysomething social-worker Halla (Alia Alzougbi). Dispensing advice at a refugee-center, she meets many members of the city's culturally-diverse though mainly Muslim asylum-seeker community. Several obtain significant screen time, most engagingly Kamal (Fouad Cherif), a happy-go-lucky Algerian who becomes the ever-so-Italian 'Nico' when working as a trattoria waiter. The main drama, however, revolves around Halla and how she copes with a particularly awful episode from her past - a secret to which new-in-town Palestinian weightlifter/soldier Ahmad Hassan Naama) happens to be privy.
Unsurprisingly, given the project's nature, performances are wildly variable, with professionals like Alzougbi, Nabil Shaban and Gary Lewis generally faring better than their enthusiastic non-pro counterparts. Camerawork (lowish-end DV) and direction are passably functional, in keeping with a screenplay that baldly spells out its themes and in the latter stages veers uncomfortably close to melodrama.
Jim Sutherland's eclectic score is intrusive and near-incessant, almost drowning out dialogue in one scene. It's surely no coincidence that the most powerful sequence, in which Halla's torment is finally explained, is one of few instances where music is dispensed with and Alzougbi is given space to really let rip.
Production companies: Makar Productions & Theatre Workshop. Cast: Hassan Naama, Alia Alzougbi, Waseem Uboaklain, Okan Yahsi, Fouad Cherif. Director: Robert Rae. Screenwriters: Robert Rae, Ghazi Hussein, James McSharry, Roxana Pope, Saleyha Ashan, Lucy Kaya. Producer: Eddie Dick. Executive Producers: Leslie Finlay, Ewan Angus. Director of Photography: Ian Dodds. Production Designer: Laurel Wear. Music: Jim Sutherland. Costume Designer: Laurel Wear. Editor: Tina Hetherington. Sales Agent: Makar Productions, Edinburgh. No rating, 102 minutes.
EDINBURGH -- As an example of issue-driven community film-making, "Trouble Sleeping", an ensemble drama "based on the experiences of members of Edinburgh's refugee community," is a respectable effort that almost transcends tight budgetary limitations. Intentions are admirable, and there's much to like about the way we're taken into the tough daily lives of asylum-seekers in Scotland's picturesque capital. But in their keenness to do justice to a wide spectrum of cultures and topics, the filmmakers bite off more than they can comfortably chew. This results in a choppy, slightly unfocused multi-strander.
Festivals specializing in human-rights issues should take note. Otherwise, the picture is too uneven and technically rough-edged to gain much access.
The screenwriters should perhaps have concentrated on the closest thing "Trouble Sleeping" (an odd title, by the way) has got to a protagonist: thirtysomething social-worker Halla (Alia Alzougbi). Dispensing advice at a refugee-center, she meets many members of the city's culturally-diverse though mainly Muslim asylum-seeker community. Several obtain significant screen time, most engagingly Kamal (Fouad Cherif), a happy-go-lucky Algerian who becomes the ever-so-Italian 'Nico' when working as a trattoria waiter. The main drama, however, revolves around Halla and how she copes with a particularly awful episode from her past - a secret to which new-in-town Palestinian weightlifter/soldier Ahmad Hassan Naama) happens to be privy.
Unsurprisingly, given the project's nature, performances are wildly variable, with professionals like Alzougbi, Nabil Shaban and Gary Lewis generally faring better than their enthusiastic non-pro counterparts. Camerawork (lowish-end DV) and direction are passably functional, in keeping with a screenplay that baldly spells out its themes and in the latter stages veers uncomfortably close to melodrama.
Jim Sutherland's eclectic score is intrusive and near-incessant, almost drowning out dialogue in one scene. It's surely no coincidence that the most powerful sequence, in which Halla's torment is finally explained, is one of few instances where music is dispensed with and Alzougbi is given space to really let rip.
Production companies: Makar Productions & Theatre Workshop. Cast: Hassan Naama, Alia Alzougbi, Waseem Uboaklain, Okan Yahsi, Fouad Cherif. Director: Robert Rae. Screenwriters: Robert Rae, Ghazi Hussein, James McSharry, Roxana Pope, Saleyha Ashan, Lucy Kaya. Producer: Eddie Dick. Executive Producers: Leslie Finlay, Ewan Angus. Director of Photography: Ian Dodds. Production Designer: Laurel Wear. Music: Jim Sutherland. Costume Designer: Laurel Wear. Editor: Tina Hetherington. Sales Agent: Makar Productions, Edinburgh. No rating, 102 minutes.
- 6/19/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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