Under the leadership of producers Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard, Footprint’s films bring to life stories of courage, redemption, forgiveness, faith, hope and love. Cinema presentations and primetime broadcasts that ignite your mind, fire your heart and stir your soul.
Footprint Films was founded in 1994 with the coming together of film makers Mark Blaney, Simon Beaufoy & Bille Eltringham and record producer Juliet Wills. A series of short films, Linger (1995 Footprint, Channel 4), Yellow (1996 Channel 4, BFI) and Closer (1997 BBC Films, Film Four) laid the foundation stone towards feature production.
1998 marked Footprint’s first cinema feature, (Pathé, BBC Films, Studio Canal, Yorkshire Media), written by Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty), co-directed by Simon and Bille Eltringham (The Long Firm, Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution) and produced by Mark Blaney.
Subsequently the team produced the groundbreaking This is Not a Love Song (UK Film Council, Footprint), a DV/35mm feature which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival and was released simultaneously in theatres and on-line, a world first in 2003. In its original iteration, Footprint also produced, amongst others, Fran Lea’s much acclaimed, Everyone’s Happy (Footprint, Yorkshire Media) and Kim Hopkins’ Native American cop feature, Wanted (UK Film Council, A&E [USA], WDR [Germany], Soros Documentary Fund).
Under the new Footprint partnership of Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard, 2010 saw the production and release of UK/South Africa/Rwanda international co-production, Africa United (Pathé, BBC Films, UK Film Council), with first time feature director Debs Paterson. Continuing their support of first-time directors, their latest release is Escape from Pretoria, written and directed by Francis Annan. They have also produced short films with emerging filmmakers in places as diverse as Kurdistan/N Iraq, India and Ireland, as well as in the UK.
Light or darker in shade, at their very core Footprint’s productions seek to be gripping stories which seek to challenge our attitudes, our beliefs, our lives.