Ingenious-backed The Kindness of Strangers has been selected to open the 69th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2019. The film is directed by Lone Scherfig and will also play in competition.

The New York-set drama stars Zoe Kazan, Tahar Rahim, Andrea Riseborough, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel and Bill Nighy. The Kindness of Strangers is a contemporary ensemble drama that follows a group of characters all trying to survive a cold New York City winter, who find laughter, love and kindness in each other. 

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Three Ingenious productions have been shortlisted for a Broadcast Award in the ‘Best Pre-School Programme’ category. The Broadcast Awards recognise the UK’s most groundbreaking and successful content, rewarding creativity, quality and originality.

The Ingenious programmes that have been shortlisted are:

Claude
Claude is a children’s animation that follows the humorous adventures of a beret-clad dog, based on the best-selling book series. The show has many stars appearing as loveable characters, from Simon Callow CBE who plays raconteur sock, Sir Bobblysock, to Jane Horrocks who plays Claude’s owner, Mrs Shinyshoes. Claude was first released in the UK in June 2018 on Disney Junior.

Pablo 
Pablo is an autistic boy who draws animal friends to help him through the challenges of daily life. It was first released in the UK in October 2017 on CBeebies and was recently nominated for a Children’s BAFTA in the ‘Digital’ category.

Waffle the Wonder Dog 
Waffle the Wonder Dog follows an adorable fluffy dog who can’t help but cause trouble and is on a crash course to cementing the Brooklyn-Bell blended family. The first series premiered on CBeebies in February 2017, with the second series beginning in July of this year. The show was recently also nominated for a Children’s BAFTA in the ‘Pre School – Live Action’ category.

Click here to see the full Broadcast Awards shortlist.

We are delighted to announce that we have won Most Impactful Investment at the 2018 Growth Investor Awards. We are also proud to have been a finalist in the non-AIM category for Best BR Investment Manager. The awards celebrate those who successfully deploy investment into high potential businesses and recognise the impact beyond that investment. Winners were announced on Wednesday, 7 November 2018 at the Royal Lancaster Hotel.

Our win for Most Impactful Investment commends our investment in Mindful Education, an award-winning content and technology company specialising in creating innovative, flexible professional courses and apprenticeships. Mindful Education partner with colleges around the UK to deliver pioneering courses that meet the needs of students, government and industry.

The investment made by Ingenious enabled Mindful Education to significantly increase their product range, further expand their sector-leading work in analytics, grow their team size to 34 and increase their marketing capacity – all without compromising on the quality of their content and technology. The company has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 2015 and is now working with 18 colleges around the UK – keeping them on track for their 1,000th learner to start a course in January. Like the judges, we have been impressed by the impact such a young company has had on the sector and wider community.

I am delighted that the work of our investment team and of the Mindful Education team has been recognised with this award. This achievement recognises our extensive sector knowledge and operating experience and how we are able to bring these skills to support the ambitions of fantastic growth businesses.

Neil Forster

CEO at Ingenious

The Ingenious investment team have absolutely transformed our company. Their ability to simultaneously balance high-level strategy and detailed operational implementation has allowed us to improve multiple aspects of how we work. They have supported our vision from day one and their investment has been absolutely pivotal to our growth.

Mark McKenna

Founder and Managing Director at Mindful Education

Housing needs in the UK are changing amid declining levels of home ownership and lifestyle shifts. Rather than the traditional ‘buy-and-hold’ model, residential housing needs are shifting towards developments that are built for rent and aimed towards a specific demographic who are at a particular life stage. As such, funding needs are changing to support these types of developments and this should lead investors to consider new ways of accessing the property market.

For many years, the typical approach to property investing has been through longer-term investments in buy-to-let and equity. While this ‘bricks and mortar’ approach has worked well for many investors, a fully-valued market in both the residential and commercial sectors means that capital appreciation opportunities are now looking limited. Instead, investors should be looking to work their property assets operationally through shorter-term loan opportunities, which are used to fund the development or redevelopment of buildings in niche areas of the market. By viewing property investments as operational assets, investors can access a growing market opportunity that offers the potential for greater long-term reward.

Mark Gill, Andrew Gunn, Guy Botham and Vincent Bruzzese have teamed to launch Solstice Studios, a Los Angeles-based theatrical producer and distributor that will focus on mid-budget movies for wide release.

The company opens its doors today with $400 million in capitalisation, including $150 million through Ingenious Media, and will be involved in fully financing, producing, developing, selling internationally and distributing feature films in the U.S. on a wide-release basis. The plan is for Solstice to produce 3-5 movies a year for a global audience in the $30 million – $80 million range, while acquiring another 2-4 titles a year.

For its productions, Solstice will target movies with global appeal, primarily in the action, thriller and action-comedy space. In the American acquisitions arena, the company will consider any film that merits a wide U.S. release including action, thriller, comedy, romantic comedy, science fiction and horror. Solstice Studios is expected to grow to 65 people in its first year with plans of also launching an in-house foreign sales division.

Between the co-founders they possess a $5 billion production track record. After exiting Millennium Films in January 2017 as president, Gill, the former production chief at Warner Bros Independent and Miramax whose credits includes award-winning hits Pulp Fiction and The English Patient, began putting a plan in place to build a studio over the course of 20 months and reached out to those with whom he had long-standing business relationships. Gill has known Bruzzese –a MarketCast vet, OTX president and former head of STX’s strategy and analytics– since his marketing days at Columbia Pictures, over the last 20 years. Bruzzese will serve as Solstice’s Marketing and Strategy Head.

Botham, who will serve as co-head of production with Gunn, is a leading VFX entrepreneur of 15 years. His credits include Wonder Woman, Avatar, The Social Network, Benjamin Button, Wolverine, The Avengers and The Revenant, and most recently he was the founder and owner of Vitality VFX. Gunn has a 20-year $1.2 billion track record as producer and production executive. He has produced such films as Freaky Friday, The Haunted Mansion and Race to Witch Mountain for Walt Disney Pictures and is a producer on its upcoming Cruella starring Emma Stone.

With such mid-budget features as Warner Bros’ Crazy Rich Asians and New Line’s The Nun excelling at the box office, it’s proof the fare works at the domestic and global box office and that’s where Solstice Studios comes in. “If the movies are good, people will go,” says Gill, who has also had success with mid-budget action fare such as Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen, which together minted close to $400M at the global box office. Over the past 12 years, the number of studios’ wide releases have dwindled by 26%, while the number of mini-major/independent releases have dropped by 42% over the past three years. Meanwhile, the international box office has jumped 72% over the last decade and domestic has hit banner levels north of $11 billion over the last three years. That’s an incredible disconnect between supply and demand, and it serves as perfect timing in the marketplace for Solstice.

“The demand is still there, but the supply has gone down,” says Gill of the bottleneck. “Our focus will be those wide-release films, which U.S. theaters want, Americans still go to see, and which drive international independent distributors’ slates,” he adds.

Ingenious, founded by Patrick McKenna in 1998, has facilitated funding for films including Avatar, Life of Pi and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Said Will Harrison, Managing Director of Ingenious Media: “We couldn’t be happier to be supporting Mark and his team of industry veterans in this enormously exciting production and distribution initiative. The independent feature film space has been increasingly underserved and producers everywhere will be delighted to find a new distribution buyer and production partner in the market. Ingenious has a proud track record of bringing together top creative talent and the very best commercial partners, a tradition which this new venture will help us continue.”

Christopher Milburn and Gareth West curated and brokered the Ingenious funding and will have an ongoing role in sourcing projects and co-financing opportunities at Solstice. The deal was negotiated by Gill and Botham for Solstice and Peter Touche, Ingenious Media’s head of film.

Neil Sacker and David Eisman of Skadden repped the company. Lindsay Conner, partner and Chair of the Media and Entertainment Group at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP and his partner Sarah Fergusson Chambless represented Solstice’s equity capital and P&A financier, a private U.S. family office. Anders Erdén, Director of Legal and Business Affairs acting for Ingenious.

Joining the four co-founders on the Solstice team include Physical Production Head Rene Besson (Driven, The Expendables); Head of Distribution Elliot Slutzky, most recently from Open Road; SVP and CTO Ed Churchward, formerly of Vitality VFX; SVP Strategy Miriam Brin, formerly of STX and OTX; and SVP Production & Development Beth Bruckner O’Brien, who was formerly with Millennium as VP Production where she worked on such movies as Olympus Has Fallen, London Has Fallen, the Expendables franchise and Hitman’s Bodyguard.

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We were delighted to recently attend the annual Script to Screen conference in Toronto. Each year, host Winston Baker brings together hundreds of directors, producers and film industry experts to provide delegates with a step-by-step guide to the filmmaking process as well as discussing the various paths and avenues to film funding.

From the creative aspects involved in finding the perfect script, to packaging talent that appeals to producers, the Script to Screen summit shows budding filmmakers how to navigate the complexities of the film industry.

Ingenious Media investment director Andrea Scarso attended the event and appeared on a co-production discussion panel where he gave his knowledge and expertise of film finance.

Following the event, Andrea commented: “I was delighted to be given the opportunity to attend this summit, which is now in its tenth year. The film industry is a multi-faceted business; a hugely daunting prospect for anyone starting out, so I was thrilled to share my experience and understanding on one aspect of a hugely elaborate process.

Conferences like these can provide aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters with a unique opportunity to develop their knowledge of the film industry, and I believe they play a crucial role in helping artistic talent to realise their creative ambitions

Andrea Scarso

Managing Director at Ingenious

The taxpayer-funded Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) council have announced they are to fund nine new university-led creative clusters along with an associated Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) for the cultural and creative industries.

This commitment to a creative industries clusters programme forms part of the Government’s Industrial Strategy and specifically part of the ‘sector deal’ announced earlier this year.

We’re delighted with this news and welcome the commitment. We’re also pleased to make our own contribution to the pursuit of knowledge in the creative sector by part-funding Michael Franklin’s post-doctoral research on examining the understanding and management of risk in the film industry in collaboration with the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE) at Goldsmiths in the University of London.

Michael’s research enquires into the need for new digital-business models in the film industry: it is commercially focused but also academically rigorous. It serves as a model for the kind of industrially focused and commercially aware R&D work the new Policy and Evidence Centre should undertake on behalf of the sector.

At Venice, both Dragged Across Concrete, starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn, and Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate, starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh, are having their worldwide premieres. 

Meanwhile at Toronto, Hotel Mumbai, The Wedding Guest and Out of Blueare premiering, while Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy has been selected as the closing night film.

I am thrilled to see the quality of film being put forward by Ingenious at this year’s festivals and the critical acclaim that they have already received. Ingenious continues to be at the forefront of cutting edge independent film. These latest offerings, some of which may never have come to screen without independent finance, reinforce Ingenious’ unique place within the creative industries.

Will Harrison

Managing Director & Head of Media

The NFTS has been given the prestigious prize in recognition of the role it has played developing British creative talent for nearly 50 years. It is the first time an educational institution has been given the award.

In addition, our students did us proud by winning their fifth consecutive British Short Animation BAFTA with Poles Apart directed by Paloma Baeza and produced by Ser En Low.

Paloma Baeza and Ser En Low

If that wasn’t enough, Producing MA graduate, Emily Morgan along with the film’s director and writer, Rungano Nyoni won Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer for I Am Not A Witch. And NFTS Cinematography graduate, Roger Deakins clocked up his fourth BAFTA winning the Cinematography award for Blade Runner 2049.

Roger Deakins, NFTS Cinematography Graduate

NFTS Director Jon Wardle and Former NFTS Director Nik Powell collected the Oustanding British Contribution to Cinema BAFTA from award-winning actress Celia Imrie. Jon delivered a powerful speech describing how for almost five decades the NFTS “has been at the forefront of developing film, television and now games makers who are not only highly valued members of the industry widely in demand, but who also have the skills, talent and social conscious to lead it.” Jon paid tribute to NFTS founder Colin Young who wanted to develop a school that is dedicated to the idea that “filmmakers should be missionaries for a better way of life”. Continuing, Jon said: “Colin imbued in our students not only a sense of purpose but a spirit of confidence, of fearlessness, of risk taking. And those qualities have been central to our school’s ethos ever since.”

NFTS Director Jon Wardle and Former NFTS Director Nik Powell with Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema

“You can see those qualities in the work our students produce at the school and you can see it in the work of the 10 students and graduates nominated for BAFTAs tonight. From Roger Deakins for Blade Runner 2049, to Stuart Wilson for Star Wars and Dario Marianelli for Darkest Hour through to more recent graduates such as Emily Morgan and Paloma Baeza who competed and won in the Best Debut and Short film Categories. At the NFTS our goal is to ensure that the future Roger Deakins or Emily Morgan – wherever they may come from and whatever their means – have the opportunity and support to reach their full potential.

NFTS students celebrating the School’s BAFTA win

“But we can’t do that on our own. We are therefore hugely indebted to those who, year in and year out, continue to support the School including the DCMS, BFI, HEFCE, Creative Skillset, Channel 4, BBC, Sky, ITV, the Film Distributors Association and UK Cinema Association. As well as more than 80 annual scholarship donors, trusts and foundations. Thank you we couldn’t do it without you.”

British Short Animation BAFTA winning team of NFTS students
Rungano Nyoni – director & Emily Morgan, NFTS graduate & producer of I Am Not A Witch
Collecting their Oustanding Debut BAFTA

2018 was a record year for NFTS with ten individual BAFTA nominations for its alumni and 119 alumni credited across the nominated films. Nominations included:

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer

Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly (Producer) – Lady Macbeth (Fodhla was nominated with Writer, Alice Birch and Director, William Oldroyd)

Outstanding British Film

Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly (Producer) – Lady Macbeth (Fodhla was nominated with Writer, Alice Birch and Director, William Oldroyd)

Animated Film

Original Music

Dario Marianelli – Darkest Hour

Sound

Stuart Wilson – Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Stuart was nominated with Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Matthew Wood)

British Short Film

Mahdi Fleifel – A Drowning Man (Mahdi was nominated with Signe Byrge Sorensen and Patrick Campbell)

Aneil Karia – Work (Aneil was nominated with Scott O’Donnell)

Ingenious has recently named a wind turbine at Newton Down Wind Farm in Porthcawl, South Wales in recognition of local resident Robert McCann.

A neighbour to Newton Down Wind Farm, Robert noticed that the site’s front gate had been forcefully damaged whilst on a walk close to the property. Robert took great lengths to contact the site managers as soon as possible and the issue was quickly resolved.

Roberto Castiglioni, Senior Investment Director of Infrastructure at Ingenious said “Collaborating with the local community is fundamental to the success of Ingenious clean energy initiatives, so we are grateful that Robert contacted us when he noticed something out of the ordinary at our property.”

Ingenious asked Robert if he would like to take the opportunity and name one of the wind turbines at Newton Down Wind Farm. Robert was heartened by the gesture. As he recently lost a long-time companion in his pet cat Lucy, he dedicated the wind turbine to her memory. The team met Robert last month at the facility to hold a naming ceremony and to unveil the plaque.

Wind turbines spin eternally and since the demise of Lucy, I find the solitude and magnificence of them eternally therapeutic.

Robert McCann

Robert’s community dedication and shared enthusiasm for clean energy is much appreciated by Ingenious and they are delighted to have him as a neighbour.