Catching up on all relevant Cannes Film Festival/Market news this morning as you can tell… finally a day to sift through the deluge of info I've received over the last week.
Charged with developing and managing a national strategy to generate inward investment through film production via a public-private partnership with key industry figures and organizations, Film London’s microbudget production initiative called Microwave (which is run in partnership with BBC Films), has greenlit 3 new microbudget features, selected from 100 applications, and following what is said to be "a four day intensive training program and four month development period."
Of note, one of those 3 feature projects comes from British-Nigerian actor and playwright Arinze Kene (photo above) titled Seekers.
To be directed by Nicole Volavka and produced by Rob Watson, Seekers is described as "a thriller set in the world of London’s illegal immigrant underclass."
That's all we know of the project right now, but it's now on my watch list, so any further developments will be announced here.
No casting has been announced yet.
Given the subject matter, and the fact that it's a thriller, as well as the writer's and director's previous work, I'm definitely curious to know more, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, meet the writer, Arinze Kene in the video profile below; and underneath, watch director Nicole Volavka's 2008 15-minute award-winning short drama titled Survivor, about a traumatised Rwandan genocide survivor living in London, who finds a friend in a man going through similar experiences.
The film won the Best Screenplay and Best Actor awards at the BFM Film Festival, London 2008; and by the way, the the script is being developed into a feature film with the BBC Writer’s Room.
First, meet Arinze:
And here's Volavka's short film Survivor: