25/08/2016 - A raft of features including Censor, I Who Have Nothing and Last Summer given more than £80,000 of development funding

Director Marc Evans, whose I Who Have Nothing has received funding

Ffilm Cymru Wales, the film agency dedicated to support Welsh or Wales-based writers, directors and producers with development and production funding, industry assistance and mentoring opportunities, has awarded over £80,000 to several home-grown talents in its latest round of development funding.

Writer/director Prano Bailey-Bond and producer Helen Jones are developing Censor, a 1980s-set horror film where a film censor returns to her childhood home to solve the mystery of a past trauma. This will be Bailey-Bond’s feature debut. Her 2015 short Nasty won a Jury Award at the Fantaspoa International Fantastic Film Festival and a Honourable Mention at the Nashville Film Festival. Anthony Fletcher is the co-writer on Censor, while horror writer and film critic Kim Newman is an executive producer.

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Marc Evans (Patagonia [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) returns with Shirley Bassey biopic I Who Have Nothing. The film will chart the legendary Welsh singer’s early life and rise to fame while working as a single mother. The project sees Evans reunited with his producer on Patagonia, Rebekah Gilbertson of Rainy Day Films. 

After a glittering career in television with credits including Da Vinci’s Demons, Mr Selfridge and Northanger Abbey, Jon Jones will make his feature debut with Last Summer, a coming-of-age story set in rural West Wales one fateful summer. Katherine Lannon, who previously produced Jones’ television film The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton, will produce.

The agency has also awarded additional funding to four projects already on its slate. Chanya Button, whose Burn Burn Burn [+see also:
trailer
film profile] was nominated for Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Odessa International Film Festival, is adapting Catrin Dafydd’s darkly comic novel Random Deaths and Custard with Emily Morgan (Identicals [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) and Ed Talfan (The Passing) producing.

Colm McCarthy, whose The Girl with All the Gifts [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is due an autumn release is attached to direct Mr Smith, where the embittered title character is isolated from friends and family by the superpowers he dare not use, but hopes that love will allow him to become a hero again.

Rob Alexander, whose Gary Numan: Android in La La Land releases in the UK on 26 August, gets funding for thriller Concrete Plans, along with Gordon Main’s political documentary London Recruits.

Ffilm Cymru Wales’ Head of Creative Sector Development Hannah Thomas said, “This latest development round is testimony to the talented Welsh writers, directors and producers who are generating and developing their own world-class intellectual property. We are also particularly pleased to see tangible results from our efforts to improve diversity and equality in this industry.  It’s terrific to be supporting a female team behind a horror film; of the 19 individual writers, directors and producers supported in this latest round, 10 are women; and we have similarly seen increases in female representation in our BFI NET.WORK supported Beacons short film scheme, with 50% of the 18 short-listed projected directed by women. It’s a positive trend that we intend to continue.”