Golden Bear winner Peter Mackie Burns has started shooting his London-set debut feature Daphne, production company The Bureau has revealed.
Emily Beecham [pictured] - who features in the cast of Berlinale opening film Hail, Caesar! - plays the titular Daphne, a young Londoner with a frenetic lifestyle who decides she needs to change her life after witnessing a violent robbery.
The Bureau producers Tristan Goligher and Valentina Brazzini developed the project in-house. The BFI and Creative Scotland are the main financiers of the film, together with The Bureau.
The company’s Paris-based sister company, The Bureau Sales, is handling international rights.
Mackie Burns won the Golden Bear for best short film in 2005 for Milk, about a girl trying to bathe her grandmother.
Nico Mensinga wrote the screenplay for Daphne in his second collaboration with Mackie Burns after the short Happy Birthday To Me, also starring Beecham.
The Daphne shoot kicks-off amid a high-profile year for The Bureau following the success of Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, which won two Silver Bears for the lead performances of Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay in Berlin last year, with Rampling also receiving an Oscar nomination, and is up for Outstanding British Film at tonight’s Baftas.
“Peter Mackie Burns has made some visceral performance driven shorts including the award-winning Milk,” said Lizzie Francke, BFI senior production and development executive. “It is great to be able to support him on the next stage of his film career