The Brit 50: Wild Swim Films

Need to know: Emily Leo and Ivana Mackinnon have known each other for 20 years. The pair teamed up on Wild Swim in 2019, after Leo made Babak Anvari’s Under The Shadow and Mackinnon made Michael Pearce’s Beast, with both films winning the Bafta outstanding British debut award (in 2017 and 2019 respectively).

Both producers brought projects from their slates to the joint company, with lockdown speeding up the development process and resulting in four features across a three-year period. Lorcan Finnegan’s horror Nocebo, Daina O. Pusic’s fantasy Tuesday, and Chris Andrews’ thriller Bring Them Down launched in 2022, 2023 and 2024; and in the midst of that, Wild Swim produced Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex, which won the main Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and went on to three Bifa wins and three Bafta nominations. The film was also screened in UK schools to teenagers as part of discussions around sexual consent.

How To Have Sex was developed and backed by Film4 and the BFI; Wild Swim has strong relationships with the public funds and broadcasters, having been supported by the BBC’s Small Indie Fund and the UK Global Screen Fund in 2024.

Key personnel: Emily Leo, Ivana Mackinnon, producers; Tidza Karup, development & production executive.

Incoming: Wild Swim is heading towards production on a female-led boxing drama that is the debut feature of Out Of Darkness writer Ruth Greenberg. It will star Naomi Ackie – who is producing with Wild Swim – and Eve Hewson. The company is casting Andrews’ second feature Cavendish, an escape film set in the witch-hunting forests of 17th-century England, which is targeting a spring 2026 shoot. Also in the works are Cuck with writer-director Vanessa Caswill and a plague-era revenge film to be directed by May el-Toukhy, both with BBC Film; and a feature to be written and directed by Aftersun actress Celia Rowlson-Hall.

Emily Leo says: “We have a shared ethos in wanting productions to be good working places, for everybody to have as joyful a time as possible in making them.”

Ivana Mackinnon says: “We want to make bigger films. We feel a responsibility to both telling stories about the crazy time we’re living through, but also to telling stories that get people into cinemas. Being ambitious with audience is important to us.”

Contact: hello@wildswimfilms.com 

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