Well it’s that time of year again – MIFF time!

Apologies for the lack of blog posts recently. For those of you that have been keeping an eye on the site, you’ll know that I’ve been overseas since February and have only just arrived back (you can see some photos of my travels here). But now I’m back, and things are seriously busy at the office! We are working full steam ahead on our first feature film, SHOTGUN! – so things are certainly go, go, go! Stay tuned for details, but in the meantime…

Tonight was my first screening for the year, and I was fortunate to go and see an amazing film called “The Disappearance of Alice Creed”.

Written and Directed by J Blakeson (who has done a couple of other short films that I’ve never heard of, and no feature films that I’m aware of), this low-budget thriller is about two men who fortify a nondescript British apartment so it can serve as a prison, and then kidnap a woman and tie her to a bed. Then before there’s even time to react, as an audience we’re plunged into a very nasty situation, but certainly not a simple one. This film is amazing – it’s simple in terms of production values, only has a very small cast of three characters, and only a handfull of locations, but seriously keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time, as has so many completely unpredictable twists and spins. It looks great (I presume it was shot on 35mm), sounds great – but it’s the cast and the killer script that makes it such an incredible film.

It’s also incredibly inspiring for young up-and-coming filmmakers like ourselves. It really highlights the fact that you don’t need a million dollars to make a really good film. You just need a great idea, an amazing script and an incredible cast. No easy feat – but certainly achievable. Although I’m sure this film had a fairly decent but still low independent film budget, it could have been shot on a mobile phone and the end result would have been the same. It did look good, and it had a great soundtrack (although the use of music was minimum), but that just only added to the extremely well crafted plot.

It’s always a bit of a mixed bag when you go to a film festival. I’m just extremely lucky that the first film I went to this year was actually really good.

You can watch the trailer here: