Need to know: Europe runs through the DNA of Number 9 Films, both creatively and financially. The company received $210,000 (€200,000) in slate funding from Creative Europe Media in 2020, a last-gasp bittersweet grant before Brexit shut out the UK. Co-founders Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley, who first worked together at the legendary Palace Pictures, know they need an international element to make films work at a certain level. It is often to be found in the directors with whom they have teamed, including Lone Scherfig (Their Finest), Paolo Sorrentino (Youth), Eva Husson (Mothering Sunday) and Oliver Hermanus (Living). Karlsen and Woolley will be in Cannes meeting new writers, directors and actors (Woolley has been every year since 1982), hoping to find the talents they will work with in the future (Husson first caught their eye with the 2018 Competition screening of Girls Of the Sun).
Key personnel: Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley, co-founders and producers.
Incoming: The Assessment will be the feature debut of French filmmaker Fleur Fortuné, who has made a name for herself with a series of visually stunning shorts, commercials and music videos. The project is now casting with the intention to shoot this year. Also scheduled to shoot later this year is Italian writer/director Piero Messina’s Another End, for which Number 9 is reteaming with Youth partners Indigo Film.
Elizabeth Karlsen says: “Creatively, we can get used to what we look at every day. If you have somebody from the outside looking in, they open up a whole different way of visualising what we visualise.”
Contact: info@number9films.co.uk
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