ABOUT THE CAST
Adeel Akhtar – Mani
Adeel Akhtar was hilarious as the most inept of the wannabe jihadists in Chris Morris’s Four Lions. He is Wilson Wilson in Channel4’s Utopia and played Maroush in The Dictator with Sasha Baron Cohen. He appeared in Traitor with Don Cheadle and has starred in numerous short films. His theater work includes Khaled in Back of the Throat (Flea Theater, New York) and Zaaem in In My Name ( Trafalgar Studios, London). As winner of the BBC Radio Drama Norman Beaton Fellowship, he has been part of numerous BBC radio plays.
Bridget Collins – Oona
Bridget Collins was named “a major talent” for her role as Oona in Stranger Things. Her film work includes Claire in Lacuna and Ruth in Ruth & Maggie, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Collins’s theater roles include Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and the title role in Antigone. Collins is also a successful writer. Her titles for Bloomsbury include The Traitor Game, A Trick of the Dark and Gamerunner.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Eleanor Burke & Ron Eyal – Directors
Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal are a writing and directing duo who use actor-centric methods to create a fresh style of dramatic filmmaking. They were recently featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Burke and Eyal started their collaboration with short film Ruth and Maggie, which premiered at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival. Their debut feature, Stranger Things, won the top prize at the IFP Independent Filmmaker Lab. It went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival and the Jury Prize for Best UK Feature at the Raindance Film Festival among other awards. It was an official selection of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and BAMcinemaFest.
Burke and Eyal are currently developing their second feature Bright As Day, which was a selection of the Hampton International Film Festival’s Screenwriting Lab and the Sundance Creative Producing Lab.
Michael Taylor – Editor
Michael Taylor’s narrative credits include Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet, Loktev’s Day Night Day Night, Bryan Wizemann’s About Sunny, Rick Alverson’s The Comedy, Michael Walker’s Price Check, Ron Eyal and Eleanor Burke’s Stranger Things, Zeina Durra’s The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, Adam Rapp’s Blackbird, Kevin Asher Green’s Homework and Liza Johnson’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Taylor’s documentary credits include Margaret Brown’s Peabody Award-winning The Order of Myths.