20/11/2007

Academy Award nominated British filmmaker Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I, The Killing Fields) and award-winning director Terence Davies (The House of Mirth, Distant Voices, Still Lives) headline the first UK Film Council Development Fund awards since Tanya Seghatchian took over earlier this year.

Robinson’s The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, based on his comic novel, has been awarded £250,000 while Davies’ comedy Mad About the Boy receives £9,982.

Academy Award nominated writer Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Closer), who is adapting his successful play Don Juan In Soho for the screen, has been awarded £150,000.

Robinson’s film deals with a young boy who while searching for his grandfather secret porn stash stumbles upon a dark secret, while Marber’s project is a modern day London-set adaptation of the French classic.

Writer/director Christopher Smith (Creep [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Severance [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) gets £7,500 for developing psychological horror film Triangle. Leading Scottish playwright David Greig and first-time director Marisa Zanotti receive £23,500 for their dark debut Blackwaterside, which deals with two girls lost in the woods.

Writer Polly Stenham, critically acclaimed for her play That Face and shortlisted this week for the Evening Standard’s Charles Wintour Theatre Award for most promising playwright, is now adapting her work for the cinema. The project receives an award of £15,000. The film deals with a privileged mother who loses grip on reality as her family self-destructs.