Roughly two months ago I launched the trailer for COLD, a short film I wrote and produced along with a fundraising campaign to help get it onto the UK festival circuit. (See original post here)

With the campaign due to end this coming Tuesday at 7 AM, I’m making a final plea for your help.

If you haven't done so already I’d ask you to please consider supporting this short film made in the north of England to get into film festivals.

Presenting this work to large audiences will help the team and me who made this work come to life and progress our filmmaking careers, creating more opportunities to deliver more daring storytelling that enhances British cinema. And you can be a part of it.

We've managed to raise just under £400. Our target is £1,000 however, any amount helps no matter how small.

Times are tough financially so I understand if you are unable to contribute. However, you can still help by sharing the fundraising campaign across social media and informing those who may be interested in my work. I would deeply appreciate your help.

I can't achieve this goal without you.

LINK: FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN

TRAILER BELOW 👇

Now for a different kind of post from me, one that has nothing to do with film criticism! I’m pleased to finally reveal the first look of my short film ‘COLD’ along with the launch of a fundraising campaign to unleash it onto the festival circuit. I wrote the script back in 2022, which focuses on an eleven-year-old girl who plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse with her abusive stepfather. The idea was born from a haunting image that I imagined during my childhood which has carried with me into adult life. Revealing what this image is would ruin the events that unravel in the plot. But take a look at what you can expect from this journey by watching the trailer below.

A British Horror Story

COLD is an art-house horror film shot in the north of England that reveals a deeply dark and disturbing portrait of a family that is reminiscent of the cinema from Michael Haneke, Douglas Buck, and Markus Schleinzer. It’s also a film that contains no dialogue. In screenwriting theory, you’re taught as a guide to not include dialogue if you can communicate the information visually. There are no rules to screenwriting, however, I decided to challenge myself to write a story that relied solely on visual storytelling with the intention of improving my skill at this technique. Don’t mistake it for a silent film. These films belong to an era when filmmakers were unable to have the option of recording sound. COLD has sound, there’s just no spoken word. Evil doesn’t always need a voice to operate.

Why I need your help

Currently in the final stages of post-production, COLD is ready to be unleashed onto the festival circuit and open the gateway to a new era of provocation in British cinema. In order to begin this journey, I need you to come along with me.

Presenting this work to large audiences will help me and the team who made this work come to life progress our filmmaking careers, creating more opportunities to deliver more daring storytelling that enhances British cinema. And you can be a part of it.

I’ve launched a fundraiser to raise money for this journey I’m asking you to come on. I go more into detail on what the aims are and what YOU can get out of it on the fundraising page below.

LINK: 'COLD' festival fund for short horror film

Times are tough financially so I understand if you are unable to contribute. However, you can still help by sharing the fundraising campaign across social media and informing those who may be interested in my work. I would deeply appreciate your help. I can't achieve this goal without you.

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Back in May during the Cannes Film Festival, Donald Trump’s attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers of The Apprentice following the revelation of negative depictions of the presidential candidate including a rape scene involving his former wife, Ivanka Trump. The film then faced distribution struggles in the U.S. as buyers were reluctant to take on the biopic that focuses on Trump’s early days in 1970s New York. The filmmakers later launched a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to ensure its release.

Fast forward to October with The Apprentice now showing in cinemas, Trump broke his silence on the film, calling it a “cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job” in a post on his social media platform: truthsocial.com.

The film’s producer, Daniel Bekerman responded to Trump’s post via X, in an equally fragile reaction that indicates, in case you weren’t sure, that the filmmakers are no fans of the former president.

As expected, the reaction and commentary from both sides of the spectrum have been incredibly politically charged. The Apprentice is being perceived as a political tool rather than art. But if you were to strip away your own political biases and discount the activism of the filmmakers, could you enjoy viewing The Apprentice as a work of art? I’d say yes.

In a world that is obsessed and at times too conscious of the politics that take place in reality, there is a danger that we completely slip away from using artistic merit as a measure of quality. If we use politics as a measure of quality, we are destined to create a wave of cinema that will lose any value in being referred to as ‘escapism’. That will be the day in which art dies.

To read my review of The Apprentice which was published back in May for GB News, click here or copy and paste the following URL into a browser of your choice: https://www.gbnews.com/celebrity/the-apprentice-film-review-donald-trump

Out in UK cinemas from today

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