Responsibility, a comedy about an ex-convict in need of some quick cash, won the audience vote at the inaugural Funny Features pitching session a
Responsibility, a comedy about an ex-convict in need of some quick cash, won the audience vote at the inaugural Funny Features pitching session at the Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) this week.
The Glasgow-set feature follows a 25-year-old Sikh man whose desperate decisions have led to a stint in prison, and now is stuck working as a dishwasher at his family’s restaurant. Kaljeven Lally has written the script and plans to direct, with Isabella Bassett and Jena Hunter producing.
The pitching session, which took place on March 6, was the culmination of a comedy lab backed by the BFI Creative Challenge Fund, which has been running since October, with the nine teams undergoing one-to-one consultancy sessions, workshops and mentoring.
While there is no prize for the winning pitch, all participants received payment for their time in the lab.
The pitches took place in front of a packed-out auditorium at GFF, with live questions from a panel of industry experts: Curzon’s Kristian Brodie, Baby Cow’s Rupert Majendie, BFI’s Liz Warren, Bankside’s Sophie Green, Rye Lane producer Yvonne Ibazebo, Neon Films producer Nicky Bentham, Protagonist Pictures’ George Hamilton, Signature Entertainment’s Asia Muci, Screen Scotland’s Leslie Finlay, HanWay’s Genevieve Segall and BBC Film’s Alice Ojha.
“Responsibility is a character-driven crime comedy, much in the vein of The Big Lebowski, while putting an underrepresented community front and centre, like Polite Society,” Lally told the audience.
Lally and Bassett’s witty presentation was met with rapturous laughter in the room, as well as demonstrating a considered approach to casting. “Speaking as a Sikh man, I feel it’s really important to find and cast a Sikh person as the lead,” said Lally. “I’m excited to find this star and then claim all credit for the success they have.”
“Not only are we looking for the Sikh James McAvoy,” added Bassett, “but we’re excited to have some big roles which we can fill out with some big names.”
The team is budgeting the project at the £2.5m mark, and is on a second draft of script.
Industry reaction
My Fake Family, from writer Emerald Paston, whose credits include Have I Got News For You, and producer Tom Levinge, was commended by panellists for having robust commercial appeal and the potential for global reach. The film follows a woman whose lies about being from an upper-class Shanghai family threaten to derail her wedding, with Paston and Levinge on the hunt for a production partner.
“There are a bunch of very funny films out there that feature the East Asian diaspora, but they’re all American. We see a real opportunity for a British film set amongst this community,” said Paston, pointing towards the likes of Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Committed and Beach Body were praised by the panel for having robust authored voices. Committed is from writer Philip Wright and producer Reece Cargan. The feature is about a man who is sectioned and falls in love in a psychiatric hospital, drawing on Wright’s own experiences of “my first and probably still my favourite manic episode”. It aims to shoot in 2026.
Beach Body is a tragicomic body horror about a mermaid stuck in a normal human body, from writer Toby Parker Rees and producers Katie Bonham and Ray Wilson, that is working towards a £2m budget.
The Floaties also piqued the panel’s curiosity as the second project from the writer-producer team of Ciaran Lyons and Beth Allan, whose debut Tummy Monster screened at GFF 2024. The Floaties follows a woman who is facing panic-inducing hallucinations of floating jellyfish, while the rest of the world is fixated on an asteroid said to be heading for Earth.
Jason Barker’s Mister Uterus hit some emotional notes within the audience. The film is about a trans man who finds that pregnancy leads him to re-evaluate his ideas of masculinity, and is a scripted adaptation of his 2018 documentary A Deal With The Universe. Natasha Dack and Loran Dunn produced the doc and are also on board for Mister Uterus.
“We did a Q&A tour [for the doc] and people would say after the screening that they had never seen trans people happy on screen before,” said Barker. “That gave us the impetus to think more about a comedy feature – we want to bring trans joy to more people.”
The eclectic crop of ideas pitched also included a south London road trip film set in an ice cream van, Hundreds & Thousands, from producer Olivia Song and brothers and writers Rhys Aaron Lewis and Adley Lewis; Scotland-set heist film The Crown Mules from writer Noor Abdel-Razik and producer Katie Mallinder; and Ecstasy, a comedy drama about a father with Parkinson’s, and his son’s attempt to buy him recreational drugs, from producer Audain Thompson and writer Grant Taylor.
“I was genuinely impressed with all the pitches, and the whole event felt like a stand-up comedy show. I haven’t enjoyed an industry panel like that in a very long time,” said Brodie, head of development at Curzon, the producer-distributor behind box office and hip-hop comedy hit Kneecap. “People often say that comedy is difficult, but obviously when it works, it really works, and there are few genres that play more to the strengths of the communal experience of cinema-going.”
“The focus of many UK films has shifted towards drama, thrillers, and other genres, perhaps because of their broader international appeal and the desire for films that resonate,” added Majendie, head of comedy at Baby Cow, and producer of Brian And Charles and The Ballad Of Wallis Island. “Comedy, on the other hand, can sometimes be seen as less ‘highbrow’ leading to fewer opportunities for British comedic films in mainstream cinema.
“But I think the tide is turning. There are lots of amazing British comedy writer/performers out there who might find TV creatively restrictive and are excited to tell their stories through a different medium, and we all need a laugh right now.”
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