First Film Club

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Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel knew from the get-go that if she was going to tell a visceral story about school dynamics and the first childhood relationships made away from the family home, she would need to tell it from the child’s point of view. That visual perspective is partly why Playground, her feature-length debut, has earned widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike ever since it debuted in Un Certain Regard at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

We recorded today’s episode during London Film Festival, in a conference room at the Mayfair hotel, so while the audio quality might be a tad echoey, the answers Laura gives, with the help of a translator, are of the highest standard. So here, the filmmaker describes what went into corralling her inexperienced cast, including Maya Vanderbeque as seven-year-old lead Nora, and executing a stunning feat of filmmaking.

Playground is released in cinemas on April 22nd

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Award-winning casting director, Kharmel Cochrane has a reputation for championing new and diverse talent across film and television. As one of the few women of colour leading in the profession, her knack for finding the perfect cast has been utilised on the small screen in BAFTA-winning The End of the Fucking World, Sky One’s Intergalactic, and the Jodie Turner-Smith-led Anne Boleyn miniseries. In Film, she’s worked on John Wick: Chapter 4, Saint Maud and with Robert Eggers on all three of his feature films: The Witch, The Lighthouse and the upcoming The Northman.

Beginning in shorts and music videos, Kharmel’s first feature credit as Casting Director was on British-Cambodian director Hong Khaou’s debut feature Lilting. The 2014 film tells the story of a bereaved Cambodian-Chinese mother coming to terms with the untimely loss of her son as his English lover attempts to connect with her through their shared grief with the help of a translator. Starring Ben Whishaw, Cheng Pei Pei, Andrew Leung, Naomi Yang, Peter Bowles, and Morven Christie, Cochrane talks to Hanna Flint about bringing that cast together with the director...

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Actress and Producer Hester Ruoff has been working in the entertainment business for over a decade. You might know her as Debbie the paramedic in the long-running British soap opera Eastenders before her producing career kicked off with short films in 2018. It was around the time she starred in gritty crime thriller Villain, the directorial debut of Philip Barantini which cemented their working relationship. Barantini was in the market for producing partners to turn his acclaimed short film Boiling Point into a feature and Hester knew she needed to be involved. Starring Stephen Graham as a head chef wrangling his team in the kitchen, behind the bar and on the floor on their busiest night of the year, the technical feat and performances of this single-take endeavour has been lauded by critics, at the British Independent Film Awards and by the restaurant industry for its honest portrayal of their profession.

Here Hanna Flint talks to Hester about transitioning to producing and what it took to get her first feature Boiling Point off the ground.

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