12/05/2014 - Film to vie with eight other films for £20,000 Michael Powell Award

The 68^th Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF, June 18-29) will open with the world premiere of Gerard Johnson’s provocative drama Hyena, starring Peter Ferdinando, Stephen Graham and MyAnna Buring. Produced by Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen and Joanna Laurie, the film is executive produced by Sam Lavender and Katherine Butler for Film4 and is co-financed by Film4, the British Film Institute, Ingenious and Lipsync. Metrodome will release Hyena in the UK in October and Independent is handling international sales. 

Chris Fujiwara, EIFF Artistic Director, said, “We’re excited to be opening the festival with the world premiere of Hyena. It’s a powerful and beautifully directed thriller that clearly establishes director Gerard Johnson as a major talent in British filmmaking. It’s also an exceptional example of the kind of film that our festival has traditionally supported: a work in which a director of artistic integrity takes a vigorous and imaginative approach to the renewal of a film genre.”     

Hyena will join eight other British films in competition for the Michael Powell Award that carries a cash prize of £20,000. These include Gillies Mackinnon’s Castles in the Sky, Guy Pitt’s Greyhawk, Joanna Coates’ Hide and Seek, Andy Goddard’s Set Fire to the Stars, Charlie Weaver Rolfe’s My Accomplice, Graham Hughes’ A Practical Guide to a Spectacular Suicide, Uberto Pasolini’s Still Life [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Uberto Pasolini
film profile] and Antony Petrou’s We Are Monster. 

Simon Helberg and Jocelyn Towne’s We’ll Never Have Paris will close the festival as previously announced (news).