As a screenwriter, Eoin Doran’s reputation for collaborative input and can-do spirit should endear him to producers. On Wasteman, he came on as writer to retool the prison thriller’s protagonist from a white man in his 50s to a Black man in his 30s (played by David Jonsson) — helping the film achieve greenlight after several years in development, and earning director Cal McMau, Doran and original writer Hunter Andrews Bafta nominations for outstanding British debut. Among current feature writing projects — one a Germany-based film with Iconoclast and another with Magna Studios, a thriller with Charles Dorfman to direct — both see him take over from an existing screenplay.
A busy Doran is also tossing up two ideas for his debut feature as director — one an adaptation of a young-adult dystopian novel and the other a drama set in the world of boxing. Talks are ongoing with the same partners who collaborated on Karavidhe, Doran’s debut short as writer/director: producer Hashim Alsaraf, Michael Fassbender’s DMC Film and BBC Film. “They’re two very different projects,” notes the London-based filmmaker. “But they’re both about people that make brave decisions — that’s what I like to write about.”
Doran’s first taste for filmmaking came at 16 when, after dropping out of school, he began filming protests and demonstrations around London. A part-time course in film and TV production and screenwriting helped him get into university at The Manchester College, earning a BA in film and television, before gaining an NFTS scholarship in screenwriting, supported by BBC Film and Shine.
Karavidhe — which follows a day in the life of two Albanian immigrants struggling for work — picked up a nomination for best British/Irish short at the 2025 London Critics’ Circle Film Awards. “If I’m writing something British, it’s not going to all be in English,” says Doran, who learnt Albanian in order to write the script. “You have to inhabit all these worlds to truly write about Britain.”
Contact: Harriet Pennington Legh, Connie McCool, Lark Management
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