UK filmmakers and talent have a powerful showing at Sundance 2025, taking place from January 23 to February 2, 2025 in Park City. Brides, the fe
UK filmmakers and talent have a powerful showing at Sundance 2025, taking place from January 23 to February 2, 2025 in Park City.
Brides, the feature debut of theatre director and incoming Young Vic artistic director Nadia Fall, premieres in the World Cinema Dramatic competition. The film, which is written by Suhayla El-Bushra, follows two troubled teenage girls who decide to run away to Syria, is produced by Neon’s Nicky Bentham and Marica Stocchi from Italian outfit Rosamont.
It was supported by the BFI and Ffilm Cymru Wales, Welsh Government via Creative Wales, Great Point Media, the Italian Ministry of Culture Minority Co-production Fund, Friuli Venezia Giuila Audiovisual regional fund and Rai Cinema.
The Ballad Of Wallis Island, which screens in Premieres, is directed by James Griffiths, who last helmed 2014 comedy Cuban Fury. It follows an eccentric lottery winner who invites his favourite musicians to play a reunion show at his home on the titular island. Carey Mulligan and Tom Basden star in the film, which was produced by Rupert Majendie’s Baby Cow and has already sold to Focus Features for the world.
Bryn Chainey’s feature debut chiller Rabbit Trap is playing in Midnight. Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen star as musicians who move to a remote house in Wales, only for their music to disturb age-old, malevolent spirits. The film is funded by Adrian Politowski’s Los Angeles-based Align, which serves as producer alongside Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision, Alex Ashworth and Sean Marley’s Mad As Birds, Elisa Lleras and Lawrence Inglee. CAA Media Finance is selling in the US.
Bankside Films is handling sales on all of three films.
Dylan Southern’s The Thing With Feathers, an adaptation of Max Porter’s novel ‘Grief Is The Thing With Feathers’, is also screening in Premieres. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a recently widowed father who encounters a malign presence in the apartment he shares with his sons. Andrea Cornwell’s Lobo Films produces alongside Cumberbatch’s own SunnyMarch and Align. The script was developed with Film4, which executive produces and co-finances with BFI. mK2 is handling sales.
UK documentarian Charlie Shackleton follows The Afterlight (2021) and Jill, Uncredited (2022) with Zodiac Killer Project, produced by regular collaborators Catherine Bray and Antony Ing. The documentary, which premieres in NEXT, follows a filmmaker as he muses on his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary against a backdrop of familiar true crime locales.
On-screen talent
The UK’s on-screen talent will also be well represented across the festival. Olivia Colman follows up her comedic turn in Paddington In Peru with drama Jimpa, from Good Luck To You, Leo Grande director Sophie Hyde, which is being showcased in Premieres. Colman plays a woman whose visit to her gay father in Amsterdam (played by John Lithgow) proves unexpectedly life-changing.
Josh O’Connor stars in Rebuilding from Max Walker-Silverman, as a US cowboy whose ranch is destroyed by a forest fire. The film, which shot in Colorado, will also screen in Premieres.
Further Premieres titles featuring UK talent include Peter Hujar’s Day, from Sundance favourite Ira Sachs, a portrait of the famed New York portrait photographer starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall; Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, a drama set in the American West during the early 1900s with Felicity Jones and Kerry Condon; and Last Days, Justin Lin’s dramatisation of the ill-fated final journey of missionary John Allen Chau which stars 2023 Screen Star Of Tomorrow Sky Yang as Chau alongside Naveen Andrews.
Playing in the US Dramatic competition is Bubble & Squeak, from first time feature director Evan Twohy, a tale of newlyweds on the run starring the UK’s Himesh Patel and Matt Berry; actor-director Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby which features Naomie Ackie; and Twinless, from James Sweeney, a grief support group drama which stars Aisling Francoisi, whose credits include The Nightingale and Stop Motion’s
Elsewhere, Jennifer Ehle stars in Kate Beecroft’s East Of Wall, a NEXT premiere in which a bereaved horse trainer shelters troubled teens on her rundown ranch in America’s Badlands. And Emily Watson appears in Isaiah Saxon’s fantasy debut The Legend Of Ochi, which plays as a family matinee.
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