‘Judy’ Producer Hires Development Head; Asian Lab SEAFIC Sets Projects; Ellie Bamber Pic Underway In Ireland – Global Briefs

Calamity Films, the UK producer behind Judy, for which Renée Zellweger recently won an Oscar, has named Sam Gordon as its head of development. Gordon joins from BBC Films, where he worked as a development executive on projects including recent Sundance pic Herself and the upcoming People Just Do Nothing: Big In Japan, as well as Judy which the BBC backed. He also had prior roles at Magnolia Mae Films and Baby Cow, working on Stan & Ollie and Philomena. At Calamity, Gordon will report to founder David Livingstone and will work across film and TV projects.

The fourth SEAFIC lab, which nurtures Southeast Asian films, will welcome filmmakers including Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul for its 2020 edition. Five projects will take part, including a new feature from Locarno Golden Leopard-winning A Land Imagined producer Fran Borgia, and Locarno-winning The Science Of Fictions producer Yulia Evina Bhar. The teams this year hail from Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, and the projects touch on subjects including sexual assault, illegal immigration, LGBT, superstitions and violent insurgency. The reading committee overseeing the scripts will be filmmaker Aditya Assarat; Martina Bleis, Head of Berlinale Co-production Market; producer Oh Jungwan; TIFF programmer Giovanna Fulvi; Macao film festival chief Mike Goodridge; and director Tomasz Wasilewski. The first lab session takes place March 8-15 in Thailand.

Ellie Bamber (Nocturnal Animals) is leading the cast of Stranger With A Camera, the feature debut of Belfast-born filmmaker Oorlagh George, which is underway now in Northern Ireland. George won an Oscar for producing the short film The Shore. The feature was developed through Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting and Directing Labs. Also in the cast are Owen McDonnell, Michael Shea, and Brian Milligan. George is producing with Mary Ann Marino, Molly Egan, and John Wallace. The story centers around a troubled American teenager stranded in a Northern Irish village after her father is arrested for a 17-year-old murder tied to the IRA. Compelled by her father’s secrecy, she teams up with a delinquent cousin to pry their family secrets from the cold dead hands of the past.