The Craghoppers Film Prize 2019 Winners

Tony and the Bull

John McFarlane

One night in the midst of a heavy fog out on the moor a face appeared in front of me like a ghost, frightened the hell out of me. A man with a kind of burnt out Paul Newman look about him says “I’m looking for my bull’.

Jumpcut to a week later and he came sauntering by with the bull.

We struck up a conversation and I knew that he was real, I immediately struck up a rapport with Tony, I respected and admired him and I knew that this was a story I had to capture on film. This story found me. It came to me out on a desolate and isolated moor. I strongly believe that Tony and I met for a reason. This story was given to me for a reason.

3 Sleeps

Christopher Holt

The idea for the film came from a news report I read a number of years ago. It was a heartbreaking story of a group of children left home alone by their troubled mum for several days. When I started to research the idea I uncovered an astonishing level of child neglect in the UK, 27,000 children are neglected every year and over 5000 are taken into care and separated from their siblings.

We shot the in the smallest flat in London over five of the hottest days on record. It was truly intense, most of the crew had worked with me before in TV and they were brilliant and despite the difficult working conditions they were so professional and patient with the young cast.

The most important thing was I wanted to keep the takes as long as possible, I knew I could cut and combine takes to help Mollie’s performance, but I wanted to keep it as honest as I possibly could. In the end I used one take for many scenes and never cut away unless I absolutely had to. This gives the film honesty and a vitality.

The Beauty

Pascal Schelbli

The inspiration for ‘The Beauty’ started when when the Director, Pascal watched a film about plastic pollution and was shocked to see the whole beach was covered in plastic. However, he didn’t want to make a film to make people feel like they are being told off, but rather make the audience reflect on their own plastic waste. The film became more like a ‘masterpiece’ which submerges the viewer into the beautiful oceans, before revealing the litter in the sea. The whole process of the film took two years, a year and a half of which was spent purely on the visual effects.

ASIA A

Andrew Reid

The idea for this film spawned eight years ago when I was paralyzed from the chest down. A malformation of my blood vessels (AVM) resulted in a rupture, which compressed my spine while I was sleeping, leaving me completely paralyzed. Doctors told me I would never walk again but with dedication I regained movement. Today, I walk with a cane and continue to progress in strength and health.

My personal background is what inspired me to make ASIA A. As I spent many months in a hospital room focusing on my recovery, I was introduced to unique individuals of all ages who had been forced to endure life altering injuries that left them disabled. It was their stories that inspired my recovery and ASIA A.

Andrew Reid was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and is a recent graduate from USC

Troublemaker

Olive Nwosu

Troublemaker is a drama about a small boy from Nigeria who is bored during the day, and ends up crossing a line and hurting his grandfather in the process. Inspiration from this film was Olive’s younger brothers who always had a ‘boy-ish’ energy when they grew up, and thinking about how sometime children can cross the line when finding their independence.

Olive shares that the biggest challenges when making the film was working in a remote location with no power or water, and trying to make her actors (who had never acted before) relax on camera and act.

Some of the challenges when making the film in a small village in Nigeria was working in a location with no water and power, and all of the people in the film had little or no acting experience.