Amelie director's new film MICMACS reaches more screens thanks to UK Film Council funding

LONDON – 25 February 2010

The new film from Oscar®-nominated and BAFTA award-winning director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, famous for French hits Amélie, A Very Long Engagement and Delicatessen, will hit more screens thanks to Lottery funding from the UK Film Council.

E1 Entertainment received £100,000 to widen the distribution of Jeunet's caper comedy MICMACS, funding publicity and advertising, and the purchase of an additional ten prints and 20 digital deliveries, resulting in the film being released in 85 cinemas. A gentle video shop assistant ends up with a bullet permanently lodged inside his brain after a gangland shootout. Emerging from hospital without a job or a home, he is taken in by a band of colourful misfits living in a Paris junkyard, and sets about a madcap revenge mission to bring down those he holds responsible for his misfortunes. Starring Dany Boon, André Dussollier and Nicolas Marié, with breathtakingly inventive visual storytelling and wordplay, MICMACS is in cinemas from 26 February.

Action-packed thriller Shank, the debut feature film from British urban music video director Mo Ali, will also reach more audiences thanks to UK Film Council funding. Revolver Films received £100,000 to double the film's March release from 40 to 80 sites. Set in the future London of 2015, when the gap between rich and poor has grown to epic proportions and food has replaced drugs and guns as a priceless commodity, Shank follows Junior and his gang the Paper Chaserz, who trade in 'munchies' and stay away from territory disputes, but get dragged into gang warfare when a food delivery leads to conflict. Featuring popular grime artist Bashy, Adam Deacon (Kidulthood, Adulthood) and Kaya Scodelario (Skins), Shank is released on 26 March.

A number of smaller awards were also made to widen the distribution of the following films:

• Venice award-winning film Lourdes, directed by Jessica Hausner. To escape isolation, a wheelchair-bound woman makes a life-changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains. (Artificial Eye)
• Mia Hansen-Love's The Father of My Children, a bittersweet French family portrait. A film producer balances professional demands with a happy private life, but when his company spirals towards bankruptcy, he loses his grip and finds a tragic, irreversible way out of his unbearable situation. (Artificial Eye)

• Berlin prize-winning film Storm, directed by Hans Christian Schmid. A prosecutor of Hague's Tribunal for war crimes in former Yugoslavia charges a Serbian commander for killing Bosniaks. However, her main witness might be lying, so the court sends a team to Bosnia to investigate. (Soda Pictures)

• Giles Borg's 1234, Michael Whyte's No Greater Love, Nick Whitfield's Skeletons, supported for distribution for New British Quarterly, a new project from Soda Pictures, releasing more niche British films as a regular event in selective cinemas. (Soda Pictures)

• Yorgos Lanthimos's dark comic Greek psychodrama Dogtooth, winner of the Cannes Prix de Un Certain Regard. Two parents create a surreal self-styled utopia within secluded compound walls, and their three children grow up with their own language and ideals, but descend into bizarre experiments with sex and violence. (Verve Pictures)

• Warwick Thornton's Samson and Delilah, a love story about two young Aboriginal teenagers who live in a remote indigenous community in Australia. Winner of the Cannes Golden Camera award. (Trinity Filmed Entertainment)

• Spoof environmental documentary Beyond the Pole, directed/produced by David L Williams. Two eco-warrior friends set out on the journey of a lifetime, on the first carbon-neutral, organic, vegetarian expedition ever to attempt the North Pole. (Shooting Pictures)

• Bernard Rose's The Kreutzer Sonata, based on Leo Tolstoy's controversial 19th Century literature. Edgar, a wealthy philanthropist, meets Abby, a beautiful pianist, and their relationship quickly boils into a deep and passionate affair. But when Abby starts work on Beethoven's violin-piano duet with a handsome violinist, Edgar's feelings soon transform into jealousy. (Axiom Films)

For details of where to see any of these films, visit www.findanyfilm.com.  A list of the UK Film Council's National Lottery awards can be found on our website at www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk.

For more information contact:

Tara Milne

UK Film Council press office

020 7861 7901 / tara.milne@ukfilmcouncil.org.uk

Notes to Editors

UK FILM COUNCIL

www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk

The UK Film Council is the Government-backed lead agency for film in the UK, supporting the UK film industry, celebrating UK film culture and nurturing UK film talent at home and abroad.  Since its creation in 2000 the UK Film Council has backed more than 900 films, shorts and features, which have won over 300 awards and entertained more than 200 million people around the world. Its support develops new filmmakers, funds exciting new British films and gets a wider choice of films to audiences throughout the UK. It also invests in training British talent, promoting Britain as an international filmmaking location and raising the profile of British films abroad. In addition, it funds the British Film Institute.

The Prints & Advertising Fund

The UK is one of the most expensive countries in the world in which to release films, and this can lead to limited choice for cinema-goers.  While blockbusters such as Harry Potter are often released in the UK with more than 1,000 film prints, the average number of prints for a foreign language specialist film is under ten.

The UK Film Council has created a single fund, the UK Film Council's Prints and Advertising Support Fund, also known as the P&A Fund, with an annual budget of £4 million. This fund   also offers support to more commercially focused 'British' films that nevertheless remain difficult to market.

This fund is not intended to substitute pre-existing investment but rather is seeking to add value to the investment already being made by distributors in each film.

The fund aims to benefit audiences by:

• widening access in terms of the range of films available;
• widening opportunities to view such films across the UK; and
• widening audience awareness of the range of films potentially available.