Mumbai: Pathé Distribution received £250,000 for Steve McQueen’s directorial debut Hunger, a bold and unconventional film that tells the story of the imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). The award will increase the number of screens from 20 to 60 sites and pay for an enhanced media campaign in the lead up to the film’s release on 31 October.
Twelve new films have been benefited from the latest round of awards from the UK Film Council’s Prints and Advertising Fund. The fund continues to provide support to film distributors to increase the exposure of art-house, foreign and classic films which might otherwise only have a limited distribution, increasing viewing choice for audiences.
The BFI was awarded £48,351 for Of Time and the City, Terence Davies’ autobiographical documentary which pays tribute to the city of Liverpool to mark the city’s crowning as the European Capital of Culture. The award will pay for additional prints, publicity and marketing, and a live Q&A session with Terence Davies via satellite to 12 screens across the UK.
Yume Pictures received £5,000 for Young@Heart, Stephen Walker’s moving music documentary following the rehearsals of the Young@Heart Chorus in Northampton, Massachusetts, the members of which are an average age of 81.
Met Film was awarded £5,000 for Jerry Rothwell’s Heavy Load, an uplifting documentary about a punk band of whom three of the five members have learning disabilities.
Metrodome received £5,000 for Steep, an extreme skiing documentary from Mark Obenhaus featuring breathtaking sequences of skiers travelling at incredible speeds and interviews with extreme skiers and ski journalists; and £5,000 for Fears of the Dark, a French collection of black and white animated films that blur the difference between reality and imagination, from the directors Blutch, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Jerry Kramski, Lorenzo Mattoti, Richard McGuire, Michel Pirus, and Romain Slocombe.
Momentum Pictures was awarded £5,000 for The Wave, a powerful German drama about a high school teacher’s unusual dictatorship experiment, directed by Dennis Gansel and based on true events.
Soda Pictures received £5,000 for La Zona, a hard-hitting Mexican thriller directed by Rodrigo Plá, which contrasts the lives of the rich and poor in Mexico in a climate of fear and vigilante justice.
Artificial Eye Film received £4,995 for the restored version of Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time Redux, a Cantonese film about a broken hearted hit man; and £3,711 for Aleksandr Sokurov’s Alexandra, a vivid and moving anti-war film set during Russia’s Chechen war.
Bigga Than Ben Ltd received £4,927 for Bigga Than Ben, a dark satire on life in multi-cultural London from director Suzie Halewood.
Sterling Pictures received £3,875 for Dominic Lees’ Outlanders, a drama about a young boy who hitchhikes to London from his Polish hometown.
