Alberto Sciamma’s Bolivia-set magical realist drama Cielo, sold by Film Seekers, and survival thriller Bone Lake, sold by Mister Smith, are among the high-profile titles hoping to catch buyers’ attention as the 21st edition of the London Screenings starts this week in London.
The Screenings are organised by Film London and take place from June 23-25 at Picturehouse Central. Around 120 distributors are attending, with 36 festival directors and programmers. Support comes from the Department for Business and Trade, the Mayor of London, and the British Film Institute.
Some 45 UK sales companies are presenting projects. Newcomers to the event include Anton, Rapt Films International, Kapers Animation, Capture, the joint venture between Capstone Global and Signature Entertainment, and the reconstituted UK-German outfit Global Constellation.
The programme comprises 26 fiction features, five documentaries, a BFI Coming Soon presentation from Mia Bays, director of the BFI Filmmaking Fund, and a Doc Society Presentation.
The documentary selection includes Eleanor Mortimer’s marine biology doc, How Deep Is Your Love?, Nelly Ben Hayoun’s space travel doc Doppelgängers3, Jessi Gutch’s refugee-themed Blue Has No Borders, Sophie Compton and Daisy- May Hudson’s prison film Holloway, and Myrid Carten’s A Want In Her.
Sales agents enjoy the valuable one-to-one time with international distributors, the focus on business and the absence of the press. “It is very focused,” says Grace Carley, the new CEO of sector body Film Export UK, which also helps to support the event. “What Film London has managed to do over the years is really carve a very good niche in the market for that post-Cannes time,”
“It’s an opportunity to meet with distributors in a more accessible forum [than Cannes],” says Moviehouse’s Gary Phillips.
Moviehouse is giving a first industry screening to UK director Joseph Millson’s debut feature Signs Of Life, a spiky romantic drama starring Sarah-Jane Potts, due to be released in the UK later this year by Bulldog Distribution.
Anna Krupnova of London-based Reason 8 agrees. She is screening New Zealand post-apocalyptic horror thriller, Forgive Us All, for which the UK-Ireland release is handled by Lightbulb.
“The carefully curated list of buyers who attend are people that actually work with UK sales companies,” Krupnova points out.
Bankside Films is showcasing Thea Gajic’s drama Surviving Earth which premiered at SXSW this year, and Irish coming -of -age story Ready Or Not by Claire Frances Byrne which premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival.
“Both films are dynamic and exciting debuts from female directors,” said Stephen Kelliher, Bankside’s managing director. “We feelt he London Screenings offers a platform to show them to distributors in a manner which is focused and without the wider distractions of some of the larger film festivals or markets.”
Buyers are equally upbeat.
“It’s always a worthwhile trip, very productive,” says Paul Gardner, managing partner at Canada’s Renaissance Media, for whom this is his sixth trip. “Picturehouse is a terrific venue. It is quiet, it is contained. Just to have a chance to sit down and have a conversation with folks I didn’t have a chance to meet with in Cannes is very helpful.”
While in London, Gardner hopes finally to close on Blue Finch’s animated adult sci-fi movie Lesbian Space Princess, after a negotiation process stretching back to the start of the year.
This year, the Breakthrough Strand, for films looking for sales agent representation, has expanded to nine titles. The sidebar includes Aoife Kelleher’s Irish documentary Testimony, about the fight for justice by survivors of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries and mother and baby Homes; Asher Rosen’s debut feature Small Gods, about an affair between a single mother and a street performer, and Shane O’Sullivan’s The Watergate Caper, a feature doc telling the untold story of the Watergate burglars.
“Our target is for the sales companies to achieve approximately $4m by participating at the Screenings,” says Helena Mackenzie, head of inward investment and business development at Film London.
“This figure is surpassed every year,” she claims. ”Over the last decade London Screenings has helped UK sales companies to generate over $50 million in sales.”
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