Great new British directors: five acclaimed debut films to watch
You haven’t imagined it. What started out as a trickle of fresh talent into the British film industry just a few years ago has gathered momentum into a fully fledged new wave. First features from British film-makers have triumphed at international film festivals (in addition to Molly Manning
Walker’s Cannes win, Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper took a top prize at Sundance and Luna Carmoon’s Hoard hauled home three awards from Venice), and they have also found engaged and receptive audiences in cinemas. Recent box office successes include Charlotte Wells’s indie phenomenon Aftersun and Scrapper, which fought its corner impressively against the Barbenheimer juggernaut.
So what’s behind it all? Certainly, a push to diversify the range of voices within the industry has had a considerable effect, with women and people of colour taking centre stage and telling distinctive and personal stories. And kudos is due to the BFI and BBC films in particular for their support of new, diverse talent. But it’s more than that. The wildly disparate first features of the past 24 months have one thing in common: they embrace risk. It’s as though somewhere along the line there was a collective decision to stop chasing the commercial safe bet; a rejection of cinema as a formulaic product, script-doctored into oblivion. Instead of second-guessing audience whims, filmmakers have made the movies they want to make – movies that proudly retain their sharp edges and difficult themes. Long may it continue. Wendy
Aftersun
Charlotte Wells
The Edinburgh-born director Charlotte Wells tapped into the cinema culture of her city from an early age. She credits her local multiplex with her exposure to mainstream movies, and the Edinburgh international film
festival for opening her eyes to the world of indie film-making. She attended New York University with the intention of becoming a producer, but soon caught the directing bug. Her lyrical, impressionistic debut, Aftersun, exploring the relationship between a child and her loving but struggling young father during a holiday in a Turkish resort, was a breakout success last year, earning a Bafta for Wells, and an Oscar nomination for its star Paul Mescal. It’s a deeply personal work for Wells, who drew on her own past for inspiration. WI In Camera
Naqqash Khalid
Born and raised in Manchester, Naqqash Khalid studied English literature at Salford University and started out as a lecturer in the university’s school of arts and media. His directing break came after a screenplay he wrote was picked up by the lowbudget film production scheme iFeatures (supported by BBC Film, Creative England and the BFI). His debut, In Camera, which screens in competition at the London film festival this month, is a playful quasi-fantasy that follows an aspiring actor, played by Nabhaan Rizwan (1917, Station Eleven), as he embarks on a Kafkaesque circuit of auditions. It explores race, class and the movie industry, with a new generation of film fans in mind. “I think the threeact film is no longer fit for purpose,” says Khalid, “and I wanted to make a film that was suitable for our contemporary culture.” WI
Hoard
Luna Carmoon
In a business generally stacked against people without the right connections and credentials, Carmoon has prevailed. With no film school degree or industry foothold, the selftaught south Londoner got her first two shorts into the London film festival – boosted by a place on Creative England’s shortFLIX scheme for unqualified and under-represented film-makers under 25. Her debut feature, Hoard, premiered in September at the Venice film festival, where it
snagged three prizes. A raw, sometimes dreamlike coming-of-age portrait of a teenage girl still haunted by her late mother’s mental illness, it impresses with its emotional and sensory intensity. It screens in competition at the London film festival this month. Guy Lodge Femme
Sam H Freeman and Ng Choon Ping The Singapore-born theatre director Ng Choon Ping and the Londoner Sam Freeman, a playwright and TV writer, had long been friends before making a short film together. A stylish tale of dangerous gay flirtation starring Paapa Essiedu and Harris Dickinson, Femme was acclaimed at festivals and Bafta-nominated – enabling them to expand it into a full-blown, feature-length psychodrama of the same title, released on 1 December, starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as a drag queen on a revenge mission against George MacKay’s closeted gay-basher. Tense and frank about clashing modes of masculinity, it boldly announces the duo as “queer creators pushing our way into a straight space”, as Ping put it in a recent interview. GL Rye Lane
Raine Allen-Miller
Born in Manchester, Allen-Miller moved with her father at the age of 12 to London: specifically south London, the area to which her acclaimed debut feature, Rye Lane, released earlier this year, is such a sherbet-bright valentine. Having studied art at the Brit School, she spent her 20s building a successful career in advertising and music videos, honing the poppy, in-your-face visual style that energises Rye Lane. It’s an irresistible odd-couple romcom that brings the spirit of Richard Curtis to multicultural gen-Z Britain – though Allen-Miller’s stated influences run the gamut from Peep Show to Roy Andersson. GL