Writer-director Mark Jenkin, whose feature debut “Bait” was nominated for two BAFTAs last week, has set his next project, “Enys Men” (“Stone Island”), with Film4.
Jenkin will direct from his own script. Denzil Monk is producing for Bosena. Johnny Fewings is executive producing, with Kate Byers and Linn Waite as associate producers. Film4 will co-finance the film, with senior commissioning executive Lauren Dark overseeing late stage development and production, alongside further development and production support from Falmouth University’s Sound Image Cinema Lab.
Set on a mysterious island crossed by leylines and timelines, with only an ancient standing stone for company, “Enys Men” is the story of a woman haunted by echoes of both the past and the future. Billed as an “ecosophical horror,” the film is expected to shoot in and around Cornwall in May 2020.
Jenkin’s debut, a story of Cornish fishermen whose traditional livelihoods are threatened by an influx of gentrifying outsiders, was hailed by Variety as an “engaging and defiantly hand-crafted, offbeat experiment” whose hard-earned insights about tradition clashing with modernity “come in subtly graded shades of gray.”
Popular on Variety
Black-and-white, hand processed and shot on a vintage 16mm camera, “Bait” premiered in the Forum section at the Berlin Intl. Film Festival and launched in U.K. cinemas via BFI Distribution last summer to rave reviews. It has grossed over £470,000 ($613,000) to date and is still playing in cinemas across the UK.
“Bait” was nominated for Outstanding British Film of the Year and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer at the BAFTAs, and British/Irish Film of the Year and Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker of the Year at the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards. It was also nominated for four British Independent Film Awards, winning Breakthrough Producer (Linn Waite and Kate Byers).