Stars of Tomorrow 2025: Liam White (writer/director)

Audience feedback to 2022 short Punch-Drunk is contributing to Liam White’s feature version. Set in Marseille, the psychological thriller follows a man whose life unravels when interrupted by a stranger connected to his past.

“It looks at the polyvalent nature of truth. Are some crimes unforgivable? Was there a crime at all?” says White. “I’ve fed how people reacted to the short into the [feature] script.” The Punch-Drunk short, co-directed with Larry Ketang and starring Barry Ward, was Bafta-longlisted; Anna Keeley of Escape Plan is producing the feature, with White as solo director and the film to be a UK-French co-production shooting in France.

Over the past decade, Manchester-based White has balanced film projects with working as a science teacher, including for children with behavioural difficulties. “It’s hard being a teacher, so filmmaking was my creative release,” says White, who plans to move full-time into film.

He is also developing A Fire In The Dark with Heyday Films - a horror inspired by what terrified him as a child (“vampires”) and what terrifies him now (“still vampires, but also my kids dying”). Also with Keeley is Free Fall, a thriller White describes as “Heat meets Sexy Beast set in 1980s Britain”.

Last year, his solo directing debut Housewarming won best UK short at Raindance, and he went on to participate in the BFI Network@LFF programme.

Through lessons learned from teaching, White aims for “chilled-out sets”, and believes “no-one has ever been bullied into working better”. He combines that ethic with a meticulous approach to writing. “You should be able to point to any line in my script and say, ‘What was the justification for it?’ And I should have an answer.”

Contact: Jago Irwin, Independent Talent 

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