The British Film Institute (BFI) Film Fund has announced support for two feature documentaries following its first ever pitching session held at and in partnership with the UK’s leading documentary festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest. Some 50 applications were shortlisted by a team of senior executives from the BFI and Doc/Fest, with eight projects selected to pitch for funding to an expert panel including representatives from the BFI, Picturehouse and SXSW Film.  

The BFI Film Fund has committed to supporting Louise Osmond’s Dark Horse, which is produced by Judith Dawson and tells the inspirational true story of a group of friends from a working men's club in a Welsh village who decided to take on the elite ‘sport of kings’ and breed themselves a racehorse; and Brian Hill’s Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], produced by Katie Bailiff, which examines the compelling case of Thomas Quick, Sweden’s most notorious serial killer whose story shocked and haunted the Swedish nation for thirty years, but who may not be a killer at all.

The BFI has also committed to further engagement on Jerry Rothwell’s ‘hippy heist’ story of the mystics and mechanics that founded Greenpeace, How To Change the World [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], produced by Al Morrow, which was highly commended by the panel.

Lizzie Francke, BFI Film Fund Senior Executive, said, “A documentary’s cinematic potential boils down to the three A’s: Authorship, Audience, Aesthetic. These qualities set documentaries of cinematic scale and ambition apart, ensuring that the films stand tall within the Film Fund’s portfolio and provide a legacy for the future within the BFI’s national archive.”