National Film and Television School Producing Alumni Take Cannes By Storm

It may have been rainy in Cannes but National Film and Television School Producing MA alumni continued to shine!

As the 2023 Cannes Film Festival began it was announced that graduates Solomon Golding and Joanna Vymeris would be joining legendary British director Sally Potter as producers on Orlando, Now, the new and ‘re-framed’ reinvention of Potter’s celebrated and Oscar-nominated adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel. They join her regular producing partner Christopher Sheppard, who produced the original film, which made Tilda Swinton a star, thirty years ago. The producing duo, who only graduated from the NFTS earlier this year, were in Cannes with Sheppard to work on the financing of the film.

Additionally, alongside National Film and Television School Directing Fiction MA graduate Musa Alderson-Clarke, Golding was in Cannes to also celebrate the selection of their 2023 graduation film Killing Boris Johnson, one of 16 short films selected to compete from around the world in Cannes’ long established Cinefondation event.

In the Main Competition for the Palme d’Or, one of the most prestigious film awards in the annual festival calendar, two recent graduates served as producers on Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero. The film stars Mia Wasikowska and was filmed in Austria and Oxfordshire in 2022. Johannes Schubert produced and James Bowsher was the Associate Producer of the film, which is set in a boarding school where the charismatic head teacher is drawn into a dystopian whirlpool of self-harm. Schubert and Bowsher were in adjoining year groups on the NFTS Producing course only three years ago. The film marks the latest international launch for the celebrated Austrian auteur director, whose previous films Lourdes and Little Joe have attracted international acclaim over the past decade, and Schubert started working on the film’s development while he was still studying at the NFTS!

In the other selection of 20 Cannes world premieres, Un Certain Regard, two films were produced by a pair of the School’s most successful female Producing MA graduates.

NFTS Cinematography alumna Molly Manning Walker took home the coveted newcomer prize for her directorial feature debut How to Have Sex. Filmed almost entirely on location in Greece, and widely celebrated in Cannes for its freewheeling energy and moving young performances, How to Have Sex was line produced by NFTS Producing graduate Marie-Elena Dyche. The film marks Marie-Elena’s sixth film in four years and follows hot on the heels of her work as co-producer of Blue Jean. The quality of her work and her sheer range, shooting challenging films on location including in the UK, France, Greece and Palestine; while developing her own slate, have made her a ‘go to’ producer both in the UK and internationally.

Last but by no means least The Settlers (Los Colonos), directed by Felipe Galvez, which unflinchingly addresses the brutal 1901 genocide in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego, and follows the story of the British soldier who led it, was produced by celebrated NFTS Producing alumna Emily Morgan. It was filmed entirely on location in Chile. The film received a tearful standing ovation at its premiere on Monday.

A BIFA and BAFTA winner for her first film I am Not a Witch, set and shot in Zambia, and premiered in Cannes in the 2017 Directors Fortnight, this marks Emily’s fifth film. It follows on from Supernova starring Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth. Her ability to develop, finance and shoot films at scale and around the world marks her out as a singular producing talent.

Her next film Swimming Home, directed by artist filmmaker Justin Anderson, is now in post-production and will premiere later this year.

The National Film and Television School couldn’t be prouder of the students and graduates that represented us at the Cannes Film Festival this year and we hope for continued success for each and every one of them.

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To find out more about the NFTS Producing MA visit nfts.co.uk/producing.