While Ken Loach has retired from directing, the company remains busy working on projects with other filmmakers

Rebecca O'Brien_on set

Source: Sixteen Films

Rebecca O’Brien

Need to know: Founded in 2002 by Rebecca O’Brien and Ken Loach, Sixteen Films has twice won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, for Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley and I, Daniel Blake. The company is fiercely committed to co-production and has a strong network of European partners.

Now 89 years old, Loach stood down from directing after 2023 feature The Old Oak, and the company is working with an increasingly diverse group of filmmakers. Non-Loach titles have included Laura Carreira’s On Falling (2024), Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest (2024), Christian Carion’s My Son (2021) and Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here (2017). The goal is to nurture UK talent while also becoming a strong British home for European directors.

Key personnel: Rebecca O’Brien, Jack Thomas-O’Brien, producers; Ken Loach, filmmaker.

Incoming: Sixteen is co-producing Sally Potter’s Alma with Adventure Pictures. The film is being sold by Bankside Films and co-produced with Germany’s Komplizen Film. Richard E Grant recently joined a cast that also includes Pamela Anderson and Dakota Fanning. “That’s the one we hope to get out of the door next year,” says O’Brien, who has known Potter since she was 16 but has never previously worked with her.

Sixteen is developing climate-change drama Living Things with screenwriter Line Langebek (The Girl With The Needle) and director Soudade Kaadan, an adaptation of the novel by Munir Hachemi, and has new projects with Tsangari and Carreira. On the co-production front, Sixteen is working with French outfit Nord-Ouest Films on Mikhael Hërs’ next feature.

Rebecca O’Brien says: “It is difficult to get original voices and ideas funded. Getting an arthouse title off the ground is hard. We can’t develop a project unless we have some support; we just don’t have the resources. The film tax credit is a great improvement. You’d think it would be the promised land but even if you’ve got a third of the money, it’s very difficult to get the last gap filled. But good projects always come through, and they do get funded.”

Contact: emma@sixteenfilms.co.uk 

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