How a tiny budget feature got a nationwide cinema release
When studios pulled their films, first time director Guy Davies took his chance. By Danielle de Wolfe
It has been a tough time for cinemas of late. After the release of James Bond film No Time To Die was delayed until next year, Cineworlds and Picturehouses temporarily closed all their UK sites, while nearly a quarter of Vue cinemas will be shut three days a week.
Almost every blockbuster we were looking forward to in 2020 – including Black Widow, Fast &Furious 9 and Top Gun: Maverick – has been delayed, leaving the cinemas that are still open with a lot of empty screens.
And that is where the Gloucestershire-based filmmaker Guy Davies, 29, saw an opportunity for his lowbudget coming-of-age story Philophobia.
“It happened that this just created more space for us when cinemas decided to stay open,” he says over Zoom from his little attic office.
“I thought ‘There is room in the cinemas right now because studios are pulling their films out and we’ve got a film that has done well on the festival circuit’ so I just thought I would have a crack.
“I started with local cinemas because I was only trying to get four or five to be honest, and then once I had a few I thought maybe I should try and expand this so I went a little bit further afield.”
Now more than 50 cinemas have signed up.
The film’s story of adolescent schoolboys, filmed in Davies’ home town of Stroud and even in his old school, was inspired by a short written by his friend, Matthew Brawley, about their teenage days spent on the roof of the local library.
“I drew a lot of inspiration from an amalgamation of my friendships and the sort of people I went to school with, the people I grew up with.”
“There are a lot of similar traits that people have, noone is specifically this person, it’s just the sort of people in the town.”
It features up-and-coming talent – led by Joshua Glenister who has appeared in Holby City – rather than big stars, and Davies pulled the money together after landing a write-up in the local paper.
“The Stroud News And Journal have been incredibly supportive the entire way through this process, I got in touch with them and they wrote a little piece saying I was doing this film, someone read it and got in touch and we went to a cafe and that is how I got my first chunk of money, and then I just went from there.
“I made a list of local people that had some kind of influence or might know people that might want to invest and politely got in touch, but 90% of the money was funded locally, maybe even 95%.”
Davies, who studied film in New York and previously worked in junior production roles including on the set of the BBC’S Sherlock, said he always wanted to release the film in cinemas.
“I had ambitions to be in the cinemas whereas most of the distribution offers especially for a film of our scale, we don’t have famous leads, I’m sure they were sensible, but my goals were a bit too optimistic. But it’s worked out.”
● Philophobia is out now in UK cinemas.