BBC Picks Up Indie Drama ‘Kindling,’ The First British Pic To Play Shanghai Film Fest In Six Years
EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has acquired broadcast rights to the British indie drama Kindling from debut feature filmmaker Connor O’Hara, which played in Competition at the 2023 Shanghai International Film Festival.
Written and directed by O’Hara, the pic was the first British film to play in Competition at Shanghai in six years. The BBC’s license on the pic begins in November and lasts three years. Signature Entertainment released the film in the UK and Ireland and brokered the deal with the BBC. However, first contact was made with the broadcaster by Jamie Gamache, who produced the pic alongside Mark Foligno (The King’s Speech, Moon) and first approached BBC buyer Simon Chilcott with the project.
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“It’s sometimes quite clear what the BBC is after, and Kindling definitely felt like it,” Gamache told Deadline.
Inspired by O’Hara’s short film Infinite, starring 1917 lead George MacKay, Kindling follows a group of young men who return to their hometown to turn their terminally ill friend Sid’s final summer into a celebration of life, love, and friendship. Facing mortality, Sid (George Somner) wants to create a legacy and be remembered forever. With his obsession with astronomy and the atmosphere, he comes up with a plan to bring everyone together and make this summer unforgettable. He gives each boy a category – love, home, friends, family, and location – and asks them to find an item that connects them all with the word they’ve been given. Also starring are Mia McKenna-Bruce (How To Have Sex), Conrad Khan (County Lines), Wilson Mbomio (The Witcher), and Tara Fitzgerald (Legend).
Kindling is the first feature from O’Hara and Gamache’s London-based production Lowkey Films. Since then, the pair have set a three-picture co-production deal with Luc Roeg’s production and sales outfit Independent Entertainment. Independent will finance, co-produce and represent sales on three forthcoming Lowkey projects.
Below, the pair dig into their experience as British filmmakers at Shanghai, how they brokered a deal with the BBC, and why they were “disappointed” as indie British filmmakers by the lack of support they received from the London Film Festival during the film’s theatrical UK run.
DEADLINE: The BBC has picked up Kindling. How did the deal come about?
JAMIE GAMACHE: I reached out to Simon Chilcott, one of the BBC’s buyers, directly. We’d not worked together before, but I had some great recommendations of him and what he was after as a buyer of British content. This was before we had a UK distributor and before the film was even finished. I was putting it on Simon’s radar, which isn’t normally the way things are done. Traditionally you get a distributor, and the distributor has a first window and then takes it to broadcasters. We don’t always do things conventionally at Lowkey, so we reached out to Simon and pitched the film. He took a look and just said he loved it and would love to pick it up. He said that traditionally he doesn’t buy directly from producers. So at that point, Signature came in and picked the film up. And then they brokered the deal with the BBC.
CONNOR O’HARA: We made this film for the everyday person. We wanted it to sit between an arthouse and a commercial film that could be accessible to all audiences. I think that aligned with the BBC’s mentality.
DEADLINE: The film features several young British actors like Mia McKenna-Bruce who were relatively unknown but have since found fast acclaim. Where did you find your cast?
O’HARA: We had such a nice casting process. We saw around 1000 tapes for the six younger roles. We didn’t have any pressure to cast the youngest actors based on finance, so it was all about finding the most authentic group of boys possible alongside Lily, who was played by Mia McKenna-Bruce.
DEADLINE: Had Mia already shot Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex?
O’HARA: No, Molly came to a screening of Kindling to watch Mia before she cast her in How To Have Sex. There were a couple of actresses down for the role of Lily, who had more ability in terms of finance. They were on bigger shows, and everyone said they were going to blow up while Mia wasn’t at that point. But we pushed to get her in because we felt she was right for the role. It’s now nice to see how times have changed.
DEADLINE: How was the experience of taking the film to Shanghai?
GAMACHE: That was a crazy experience. As two people who just made a film, you don’t know why you’re gonna get into a festival like that. I think the film aligns a lot with the family mentality in China. And being a country that’s been so prevalent with grief through COVID, I think that’s why they aligned with it on such a major level. It was a crazy experience to have that kind of energy around the film halfway around the world when we’ve come from a background of just being in our back gardens making films, and suddenly you’re in China.
DEADLINE: How was the UK run theatrical run of the film?
O’HARA: To be honest, we were disappointed by the lack of local support when we weren’t accepted onto the London Film Festival’s main programme. As filmmakers that have fought for independence, we thought there might be more support from there. But regardless of that, the thing that we tried to monopolize was just creating the energy ourselves. We fueled the buzz by getting the actors behind the film and coming out with a big launch. That’s what drew the BBC in and the major charity supporters. It’s been great to see audiences find the project. The film was always meant for a mass audience, which is why again, for us, I think if you could have lined up every streamer on the table and said, BBC was one of them, the BBC would be our pick because that’s something that no one needs to pay for. You can sign up for free. And that’s how we believe you reach people.
DEADLINE: Can talk a little about the structure of Lowkey Films?
GAMACHE: We work across commercial, film, and music content, so that’s documentaries, music videos, and more.
O’HARA: We’re a small company that chose to get smaller recently. We grew a fair bit out of lockdown and then recently decided to go back to a more streamlined approach so that we don’t have to worry about money and can prioritize the work. As a company, we’re choosing to set ourselves up as a B Corp (businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance). For us, it’s important to be able to say we’re sustainable and value lead. But if we can become a B Corp, that gives us a real set of values that we can pass on to employees.
DEADLINE: Can you explain the deal you’ve locked with Independent Entertainment?
GAMACHE: We are co-producing three features with Independent Entertainment. One is called Tender Omens, a psychological horror directed by debut feature filmmaker Thomas James. And then there’s Beyond The Deep, a follow-up by the Weaver Brothers to their debut Comos. And then the third is an untitled, unnamed project that is still in very early development that we haven’t announced yet. This partnership was launched after we met Independent at the European Film Market, and we built a very close relationship over two or three years. What we fundamentally align on the most is taste. We both share a very similar taste, particularly on this slate. We are using genre to explore much deeper human questions. We also share similar values. So it’s not a first-look deal. It is purely for these three projects that independent will finance and will produce.
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