Indie production company Breathless Films is inviting writers and directors of all experience levels to help build its next slate of micro-budget projects.
Producers and founders Ben Ferris and Ulysses Oliver are accepting synopses, treatments, one-pagers and screenplays as they seek to build their stable of “distinct, strident and authentic voices”.
It follows a whirlwind couple of years for the pair, who have finished production on five features since creating the company in 2020.
They included Craig Boreham’s Lonesome, a story about a closeted young man from the country who comes across an unlikely companion while down and out in the big smoke of Sydney. It screened at last year’s Sydney Film Festival (SFF) and Breathless will self-distribute the film with JJ Splice nationally next month. Dark Star Pictures has acquired the film for the US, with further sales also secured across the UK and Europe.
The company is also preparing to release fellow SFF selection The Longest Weekend from director Molly Haddon, while submitting a trio of projects for festival consideration: Amin Palangi’s psychological thriller Tennessine, Jim Weir and Jack Clark’s genre-hybrid feature Birdeater and romantic drama Love Road, directed by Oliver.
Speaking to IF, Ferris said while he and Oliver had already undertaken discussions about the next phase of projects, they wanted to increase their chances of finding the right fit and “get excited about what’s out there”.
“As with the first slate, we want to give everyone a shot and we are positioning ourselves as a grassroots company that’s as interested in emerging voices as it is more established ones,” he said.
“We’re quite keen to steer away from criteria in some ways and not pigeonhole or categorise ideas, aside from the fact that it is micro-budget filmmaking and we are doing things on the smell of an oily rag.
“The feasibility criteria is a big one for us because we need to know if an idea is achievable on a micro-budget scale.”
Ferris added Breathless was open to both early ideas and “more polished” screenplays.
“Obviously, the more developed something is the more we’re going to be able to get a sense quickly of whether to jump on board,” he said.
“But we also enjoyed being part of the development for some of the projects in the first slate.
“Development tends to happen quickly for us, but we do enjoy being part of that process.”
Film writers and directors interested in collaborating with Breathless Films are encouraged to reach out via the company’s website.