Fine Points Films project amongst Mother Tongues Award winners
Date Posted: May 6, 2021
The Mother Tongues Award, the feature film development initiative for UK-based filmmakers in which the dialogue is in a language other than English, has now selected its first three winners. The scheme is run by producers Jack Tarling from Shudder Films and Manon Ardisson and Chiara Ventura from Ardimages UK, with backing from UK distributor Curzon, sales agent Charades and creative agency Intermission Film.
The three projects selected after the inaugural run of the scheme are:
Kneecap, written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, and currently in development with Trevor Birney of Fine Point Films, is a hip hop film about the controversial Irish-language band Kneecap, who are also attached to play themselves. Kneecap will receive development funding for script revisions as well as a pre-production trailer to be supplied by Intermission Film. The Mother Tongues team will be working with producer Trevor Birney to raise production finance. Northern Ireland Screen have also provided support for the project.
Rich Peppiatt is an RTS Scotland & BAFTA Scotland winning writer and director. Since his debut documentary feature, One Rogue Reporter, achieved a global release on Netflix, Rich has written and directed a number of internationally awarded short films and commercials through creative production agency Naughty Step.
Mothers, written by Mohamed Ahmed, is a fast-paced, high-stakes, urgent drama set in the Somali community of Sheffield. Mothers is about Amina who is a pillar of her community and seemingly the perfect Somali wife. But when the glass ceiling, once placed over her, is put over her daughter’s ambition of attending Cambridge, Amina is forced to choose between the life she knows and her daughter’s future. Mothers will receive the £10,000 script prize, and the Mother Tongues producing team will be attaching a director to the project.
Mohamed Ahmed worked at the BBC before winning a script commission from Channel 4 for a screenplay about Hull’s punk scene. Now working as a screenwriter and producer, Mohamed is an exciting new voice whose work focuses on the unseen intersections of modern multicultural Britain.
Vapours, written and directed by Adina Istrate, is a thriller set in a forgotten seaside town based in the UK. Ioana has transformed the motel she manages into an underground operation helping people leave their old identities behind and start over in an anonymous, off-the-grid world. Vapours will receive funding to develop a longer treatment based on Adina’s initial outline.
Adina Istrate accumulated industry experience writing for TV before moving into film. She has been backed by Film London, the Venice Biennale Cinema College, the IFP, the Wellcome Trust, Breaking Through The Lens and Berlinale Talents. She is also a member of female filmmakers’ collectives Time’s Up/Rising Women, Primetime and Cinesisters UK. Her debut documentary feature 512 HOURS premiered on Sky Arts.
All three projects will be produced by the Mother Tongues producing team. They commented: “We are incredibly excited to start working on these three projects, which are all very different in terms of story, tone and development stages. Our decision process was based on quality and clarity of vision, but we were very pleased to be able to support three projects that also reflect the variety of ways languages other than English have come to be spoken in the UK; an indigenous language and two languages spoken by communities that have migrated to the UK in earlier and more recent times. We wish we could have supported all the projects on our shortlist, but we hope that the scheme and its incredibly positive reception within the industry will encourage more producers and financiers to invest in more foreign language projects.”
The three projects have been chosen from a total of 112 entries.
