All round the world the decline in theatre attendances has been sending a very clear message to film makers and the studios who finance them – stop giving us tired genre-based fare, give us something with edge and originality! 

From my first reading of Paul Billing’s hauntingly original script I’ve been convinced that ANGEL MAKERS is exactly the kind of film that I, as a moviegoer as well as a filmmaker, have been looking for. I have absolutely no doubt that our audiences are looking for the same thing.

Most films today are genre-based and marketing driven. This has tended to mean that each movie is engineered to be one kind of fairground ride – each film is all Tunnel of Love or all Ghost Train or all Roller-Coaster ride.
ANGEL MAKERS gives its audience the whole fairground! By turns this film is darkly funny, intensely sexual, and charged with profoundly moving human drama. Imagine all this laced through, like Judith’s toxic rabbit stew, with a strong shot of gothic horror and you can begin to see how much ANGEL MAKERS has to offer its audience.

Despite the fact that this is a period subject it’s immensely important to me that this film plays with a raw contemporary immediacy. Period detail should be kept to a minimum – as much as possible, without anachronism, we should be looking at the characters not at the clothes they’re wearing or the props they’re using. We should never feel as though we’re watching this film through the polarizing filter of time. The visual style should therefore have a brooding contemporary feel to it. I intend to use the full lexicon of modern shooting techniques, colorization, ramping and filtration to create a dynamic visual style for this picture. Jeunet has shown the way with the dazzling dark humor of DELICATESSEN and the vigorously modern shooting strategies of A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT.

The overwhelmingly enthusiastic response of almost every actor that has seen this script is further evidence of the wealth to be found in the story’s characters. The commitment of Helen Mirren (Sarah), Anna Friel (Lizzie) and three of Germany’s leading young actors, Daniel Bruehl (Anton), Benno Fuermann and Moritz Bleibtreu (Wernerand Jaeger) would be all the assurance a director needed that his film was secure. With wonderfully rich roles like Mercy, Wells, Rose and Ann still to cast it’s clear that this film should deliver a dazzling tour de force from its cast.

Obviously this is a film that should be made for a price. The budget should take no risks – so that the movie can! I cannot promise that this will be a movie for everyone. If you’re risk-averse and want your next movie to be just like the last, then this might not be for you. What I can promise, backed by the passionate commitment this script has already elicited from artists in every part of the filmmaking process, is a strikingly unforgettable and original film, brilliantly acted and handsomely mounted. 
And that is a bargain at any price.

Jon Amiel
December 6th, 2005