Alex Polunin of Glasgow-based Ossian International is a rising UK producer on an international mission.
He has two films world premiering at Sundance in world cinema dramatic competition, Lady and Filipiñana, and a third, The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford, debuting later this month at Rotterdam.
He also has two films in post eyeing up festival debuts later in the year, Rhys Marc Jones’ Black Church Bay and Marc Turtletaub’s Borges And Me, and is developing How To Speak French, the debut feature from UK-US director Dylan Holmes Williams (whose credits include BBC/Disney+ series The War Between The Land And The Sea).
Film4 has supported development on the project, which is set between the UK and France and unfurls around an individual who gets stuck in the world of a French-language instructional video. Casting is underway, with plans to go into production later this year.
Ossian was set up officially five years ago and has four full-time staff. The company has worked with international co-production partners spanning Singapore, Nigeria, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US.
“The expectation some people have is [Ossian] will be a London-based company that will be making an international co-production with other countries,” says Polunin. “We’re saying, why does that have to be the case? Why can’t it be a Scottish company that is doing that and thinking more internationally?”
Sundance
2024 was busy for the company. Filipiñana shot towards the start of the year in the Philippines. It is the debut feature of UK-based Filipino filmmaker Rafael Manuel, with whom Polunin first connected after Manuel’s short film of the same name won the Silver Bear in Berlin in 2020. It is set in the self-contained sphere of an elite golf course and country club in Manila.
Film4, which regularly backs Polunin’s projects, with development and production executive Max Park as a particular cheerleader, supported Filipiñana. The production was set up as an unofficial co-production with Singapore’s Pōtocol and the Philippines’ Epicmedia Productions. US-based Magnify represents sales.
After producing UK-based, Nigeria-born filmmaker Olive Nwosu’s 2021 Toronto premiere short Masquerade, the pair reteamed for Nwosu’s feature debut Lady, and shot in Nigeria towards the end of 2024. It follows a taxi driver drawn into the underbelly of Lagos’ sex scene, with backing again from Film4, with the BFI and Screen Scotland.
It is the first film project to be backed by Amplify Capital, a London-based financier founded by UK-Nigerian Ademola Elebute, looking to support projects rooted in African and diaspora storytelling. Further UK producers are John Giwa-Amu and Stella Nwimo, with Nigerian co-producers Adetokunboh Sangodoyin and Tunji Jamiu Shoyode. The UK’s HanWay Films is selling.
The project also has an impact producer, US company Level Forward, which is helping to support the whole Nigerian cast to attend the Sundance premiere, with additional financial support from Women In Film.
Both Lady and Filipiñana will play at Berlin after their Sundance bows.
Northumberland to North America
Polunin hails from Northumberland, in the north of England. “We very rarely would see stories being told on screen at all about where I was from,” he says.
His break came when he scored an internship with BBC Arts in London. “I was the kind of person who was determined enough to go around, knocking on doors. I started to get access to understanding how the world works from the inside.”
He identified moving to the US as a route to building a career as a producer, winning a Bafta scholarship in 2015, which enabled him to complete a producing course at the University of Southern California. While in the US, he began working with UK companies at their US offices, such as Working Title Films and Heyday Films, and built a network with UK filmmakers also supported by Bafta in the US, including Aftersun director Charlotte Wells, Black Church Bay’s Jones and The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford filmmaker Sean Dunn.
Polunin moved back to Northumberland permanently in 2017 and credits the Film and TV Charity with supporting him with the necessary costs of going to London for meetings. “The core of it was absolutely wanting to build up a regional company.”
He began working with Scotland-based Dunn on short films. Around 2021, Polunin made the decision to move to Scotland fully and form his company there, noting “close historical and cultural ties with Northumberland and Scotland”.
The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford, the first feature he produced, shot in 2023, with backing from BFI, BBC Film, Mubi and Screen Scotland, and sold by France’s Charades. The film will also play at Goteborg and Glasgow after its Rotterdam debut.
Polunin has taken full advantage of being regionally situated. While in Northumberland, he began knocking on doors for local funding for businesses not traditionally utilised by the film industry. He hopes to shoot a returning series later this year, set in the northeast of England, with Ossian previously supported by a first-look TV deal with the BBC.
He is also grateful for the consistent support of Screen Scotland since moving across the border. “Strategically, the whole [Scottish] government is aligned with this desire to kind of increase cultural and economic impact for the country,” says Polunin. “They recognise the independent film sector as being a crucial part of that.”
No comments yet