Andrew Haigh’s longtime producer on a potentially disastrous first screening of ’Weekend’, and getting young audiences to engage with cinema.
Producer Tristan Goligher, the London-based, Northern Ireland-born producer at The Bureau, is a longtime collaborator of UK filmmaker Andrew Haigh, most recently on Special Presentations selection A Long Winter, which world premiered at Telluride.
Further credits from a bustling 2026 slate include Rhys Marc Jones’ Zurich title Black Church Bay, and Queen At Sea and A Prayer For The Dying, which both played at the Berlinale in February. Goligher has also wrapped production on Corinna Faith’s UK horror Unspeakable.
What is your office like?
We’re hanging on to “old Soho”. We have an office above a pub, up some dingy stairs. It’s a nice open-plan office, with windows all around.
What’s the first thing you do when you get to the office?
My morning involves wrangling two anarchists under the age of six into clothes and off to school. Then I rush into the office and pretty much dive in straight away.
Who helped you most when you were first starting out?
I had just been a runner on a [2005] film called Brothers Of The Head, which Simon Channing Williams produced. Simon was a legendary producer, sadly passed away now. When I was going to make my first short film [2009’s Five Miles Out], with Andrew Haigh, he gave me a room in his office.
He was Mike Leigh’s producer as well. Every day for six months, I just turned up and produced the short film from there. Mike let us audition our actors in his office, which was adjoining Simon’s office, and then when it came to post-production, Simon would come along to editorial meetings with Film4 and what was the UK Film Council at the time and just be there. He didn’t say anything, but he would just be there. That generosity, him helping me and giving me that space at a point where I hadn’t even produced a short film, was really, really kind.
Who is the most famous person in your contact book?
Colin Firth. But if I say that, then Stanley Tucci [Firth’s co-star in Goligher’s 2020 film Supernova] might be jealous.
What’s your favourite festival?
It’s hard to beat the thrill of arriving in Cannes, the sun shimmering on the sea, seeing the Palais. It’s still an adrenaline rush. I also love the BFI London Film Festival. It has such special memories for me. NFT1 in particular — I used to live not far away and would ride my Vespa along the Southbank to screenings.
What excites you most about the future of the industry?
Younger audiences are beginning to engage again. The future of our industry needs to be making films and stories for that younger audience. I’m excited about that.
What is the biggest challenge facing the industry?
Keeping cinema’s cultural prominence has been difficult in recent years, which means we’re losing audiences. At the same time, the cost of production is exponentially going up, and caught in the middle of that tension are producers whose position is becoming increasingly untenable and unsustainable. We need to find answers to those [issues].
What are you most proud of professionally?
The happiest experience was making [2011 film] Weekend, the first feature I produced. We made it for £86,000 [$117,000]. We had no expectations and no reason to believe the film would cut through.
[I’m proud of] going to SXSW and winning the audience prize, when we had no reason to expect anything. There were, maybe, eight people in the cinema at the first screening. We thought, “This is an absolute disaster.” We went to a party that night and bumped into people who were saying, “We’ve heard about this amazing film called Weekend, have you heard about it?” It turned out that five of the eight people in the screening were quite influential and significant. Two of them worked at IFC at the time and bought the film.
Who would play you in the biopic of your life, and who would direct?
I should embrace a full-on Irish melodrama, from growing up on a farm, to whatever it [becomes] in the city. Jim Sheridan to direct and I’d need a Northern Irish actor so I’m going to say Liam Neeson. A young Liam Neeson.
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