WATCH: Short Film Adaptations of All Six Booker Prize Finalists
The 2021 Booker Prize Shortlist Film Series, Created in Partnership with the BBC and Rural Media
This year, the Booker Prize has partnered with the BBC to produce six short films for the shortlisted books. The films have been created by three gifted new directors: Yero Timi-Biu, Liam Young, and Christine Ubochi, who are graduates of New Creatives, a scheme funded by Arts Council England and BBC Arts to highlight the best of emerging film and TV talent.
Watch the films below, along with interviews with the three filmmakers:
A Passage North, directed by Yero Timi-Biu and starring Paul G Raymond (Black Mirror, Buffering, Bridgerton, Kiri)
The Fortune Men, directed by Yero Timi-Biu and starring Elmi Rashid Elmi (The Swimmers, Dune, Barbershop Chronicles)
What was your first reaction when you read the book you were adapting?
The two films I worked on came from texts from The Fortune Men and A Passage North. Booker Prize Foundation Director, Gaby Wood, gave us five or six extracts to choose from. I am drawn to human interest stories and the horrors of everyday life.
It was integral to me as a director to have actors from the communities (Tamil, Sri Lankan, and Somali) so I worked closely with our casting director to ensure this. The actors in both films encompassed multiple roles; narrator, observer, subject. I placed these artists at the heart of the story and let them run with it. I knew I wanted to work with younger actors to engage audiences that might not necessarily follow the prize.
What was the greatest challenge in adapting the book?
Condensing the essence of the book into a minute or so was a welcomed challenge. I wanted to remain loyal to the source material but make sure I was bringing the words off the page in a visual medium. I traveled to Cardiff, Wales to shoot The Fortune Men film to pay homage to the city’s ghosts. Many of the people in the book are long gone, but their ancestors remain, their communities remain, their impact on the city remains. I was pleased to see Nadifa tweet her appreciation of making use of Cardiff. I of course could not film in Sri Lanka, so I made use of a stunning landscape outside of Cardiff for A Passage North. I am super grateful that we were given autonomy and agency from Booker from the beginning in terms of our treatment and where we wanted to tell the story.
Tell us about the scene you chose to feature and how it relates to the whole novel.
For A Passage North, Anuk’s writing is so poetic, yet there are extremely visceral scenes in each chapter. The extract I chose was about grief and part of the physicality of it—flesh, bones, but memories that fade too. It’s quite final. I wanted to be respectful and emotive, immediately thought of the vastness of a sea landscape juxtaposed by something so insular like grief. Paul G Raymond really encapsulates the feeling of hopelessness and sorrow.
For The Fortune Men, I know this story, I know this tale of Mahmood Mattan, but I didn’t know him as a person and wanted to make sure I was doing his memory justice. Looking at the fact he’s a historical figure, a human being that lived and breathed, this is his tale and so many others like it too… I wanted personalize his journey as an innocent Black man in the United Kingdom.
There was something so gut-wrenching about a piece of text set in the 50s about police brutality, racial inequality, and isolation… that is still so prevalent now. I am so proud that Nadifa, a British-Somali author, is the only British author shortlisted for the prize. The book is so well-crafted and gripping, that my film/TV mind immediately saw it for the screen. I’ve had some people DMing me about adaptations, so it shows it’s a very cinematic book.
Elmi is one of those actors that as soon as you meet them, you know you’ve hit a goldmine. Even when we met to discuss the film, he was quoting passages that he’d learned off-book. A fan of the author, it was so evident that he connected with the material from a cultural standpoint. We rarely get to see Somali actors, let alone rising stars (he’s in two features at the moment, Dune is one of them) on the screen or at the forefront of literature. And Elmi’s performance really shone through. It was important for me to use Womanby street, a famous and historical street in Cardiff as a landmark and end on the bay, an ode to the migrant communities of Cardiff at the time.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after watching your short film?
I think these short extracts are a meditation on the themes of the books, I really hope these snippets entice readers to explore the writing. I think both these books have universal elements: family, grief, isolation, pain, sometimes joy. These are bite-sized human stories.
What are you working on next?
I am fortunate to be incredibly busy as a writer-director and juggling my own original projects alongside writing and directing episodes on other people’s TV shows. But I am super excited to be working on a book adaptation for children’s novel, High-Rise Mystery by Sharna Jackson. MD of King of Sunshine, Sohail Shah has optioned the book and I’ve written the first episode courtesy of funding from the BFI Young Audience Content Fund. High-Rise Mystery is a series of books centered around a young sister detective duo and is published by Knight’s Of. I think adapting two Booker Prize shortlisted books for the screen (!!) has done wonders for my confidence on bringing this exciting book to the small screen.
Born in 1992, Yero Timi-Biu is a British-Nigerian writer-director for TV and film, who has worked with the BBC, Channel 4, BFI, Sky, and Netflix. Yero is also a story editor for audio and worked on The Bias Diagnosis, an original Audible commission. Her award-winning short films Signs and Beneath the Surface have played at international festivals such as Encounters, Aesthetica and the BFI Future Film Festival, where she won a new talent award. Her recent film, 0.5%, was commissioned by BBC Arts and will be released on iPlayer. Yero also recently directed the second unit of Alice Seabright’s upcoming BBC and Amazon TV show Chloe. With over a decade of experience, Yero’s first job was at the BBC during her A-Levels. Now she has original shows in development with various indies—including her first YA novel adaptation for the screen—and was one of Edinburgh TV Festival’s prestigious “Ones to Watch” candidates for 2020.
The Promise, directed by Christine Ubochi and starring David Jonsson (Industry, Deep State, Endeavour)
Great Circle, directed by Christine Ubochi and starring Ria Zmitrowicz (On the Edge, Three Girls, and BAFTA Breakthrough Brits 2018)
What was your first reaction when you read the book you were adapting?
There was a vast contrast in my reaction to Great Circle and The Promise, due to the stark differences in the texts’ subject matter. For Great Circle, I remember seeing Maggie Shipstead’s words so vividly in my head. The story of two female powerhouses living decades apart, yet still becoming connected somehow left me excited to adapt the text. There was a great feeling of adventure that came from the book that I was desperate to replicate. For The Promise, I remember feeling disheartened as I found myself sympathizing with the characters in the book. Although fictional, Galgut does a great job of emphasizing that these injustices happened and still do happen in real life. I knew that I had to approach this book sensitively due to the tone of the text.
What was the greatest challenge in adapting the book?
Greatest challenge? How much time do you have? One of the biggest challenges I faced was trying to think of a one minute concept that was engaging yet subtle for two important pieces of literature… No pressure!
Tell us about the scene you chose to feature and how it relates to the whole novel.
For Great Circle, our narrator depicts the journey of the famed female pilot Marian Graves. It relates to the whole novel because of how intense the description is of Marian’ journey. We dip in and out of action, adventure and sheer horror as it looks as though she may be nearing death. We fear for Marian, we root for her, just like Hadley does too throughout the novel.
For The Promise, we’re witnessing Amor give Salome the house that she had been promised for many years. It relates to the novel because it is quite literally what the text is about. We’re left watching these characters interact with each other about this house that represents so much more; failed promises overriding any hope for change.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after watching your short film?
Hopefully some interest in reading the books. They’re actually really good.
What are you working on next?
At the moment, I’m currently in development for a family sitcom that has garnered some interest from a television network. Fingers crossed something comes out from it.
Born in 1998, Christine Ubochi is a London-based creative, with keen interests in lifting up the voices of those from underrepresented groups in society, specifically Black women. After working with the BBC on her short film, The Skin I Move In—a simple portrayal of women existing beyond their relationships with men—and the audio drama En Justice, Christine worked as a Shadow Director on Alice Seabright’s BBC1 show, Chloe. She wrote her first screenplay in 2018 after feeling uninspired by her university degree and created a short film with friends. From then on, she has sought out opportunities to make her ideas a reality and hopes to continue sharing stories, whether that’s through her own productions or working with others. She currently has two scripts in development.
No One Is Talking About This, directed by Liam Young and starring Fiona Button (The Split, Out of her Mind)
Bewilderment, directed by Liam Young and starring Luke Norris (Poldark, Our World War, Been So Long)
What was your first reaction when you read the book you were adapting?
After reading both books my initial reaction was that I knew both films would be totally different. Straight away, I knew that No One Is Talking About This needed to feel hectic, I read it as if I was scrolling through Twitter and thought that’s how I wanted it to come across on screen. On the other hand, Bewilderment was about the relationship between a father and son, I toyed with the idea of having “Robin” to narrate the piece but felt as though the Father would be stronger, as parts of the book made me feel like he had no hope for the world or his son.
What was the greatest challenge in adapting the book?
The hardest part about both projects was making sure I captured the entire essence of the book in such a short period of time. I made sure to include hidden things in the background of Bewilderment such as a telescope and similarly included lots of hidden easter eggs in the feed of No One Is Talking About This, I hope Patricia Lockwood has gone through and paused at certain moments.
Tell us about the scene you chose to feature and how it relates to the whole novel.
For No One Is Talking About This, the particular extract felt like a very manic situation, jumping from scenario to scenario, this is sort of how the whole first half of the book felt in the way that social media is so random when scrolling mindlessly. Bewilderment was a lot simpler in that I knew that the book was all about a father and son camping together. After doing a bit of research on Powers, I knew we had to make it authentic as possible to the feeling of camping in America. We recorded the first takes with a British accent and “for safety” I decided to do some alternate takes in an American accent. They were way better.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after watching your short film?
I think for me it’s reminding people of how immersive books are and that they can take us to fantastic places in our mind. You know when you read a book and start thinking about how characters and locations look, that’s all I’ve done here. It’s just one person’s interpretation which could be totally different to how someone else imagines it.
What are you working on next?
At the moment I’ve got scripts ready for a short and a feature. I’m looking to make the short next year and actively chatting to fellow Director’s and industry folk about how to get the feature made. Also, I’m currently looking into representation as a Director for commercials as well as working full-time as a Producer.
Born in 1995, Liam Young is an award-winning filmmaker from the West Midlands. He writes, directs and produces full-time for an agency in Birmingham. His most recent short, Pub Kid—a film about the awkwardness that a child feels when exploring a pub full of pie-eyed parents and lairy locals—appeared on BBC4 in early 2021 and has gone on to win multiple awards all over the world. He will be making another short next year and is currently looking into representation as a director to take the next step in his career.
The films will be part of the Booker Prize ceremony, which will be held at the BBC Radio Theatre tonight at 7:15pm GMT and will be broadcast live on Front Row, BBC iPlayer and the BBC News Channel simultaneously. Find out more information here.
