Film London’s Production Finance Market (PFM) turned 20 this year, and in this time it has become a vital fixture for filmmakers and financiers alike.

While the Market’s aim has remained the same for two decades – to help get exciting new projects in motion – part of its ongoing success has been the way it has adapted to industry needs and demands. From introducing new projects from hotly-tipped talent via the New Talent Strand to its ever-evolving list of international partners, the Market’s organisers have always sought to inject fresh life and new ideas into each new edition.

This year featured another exciting new development: the integration of Upstream, Film London’s innovative IP showcase that features early-stage projects ripe for film/TV adaptation. The second day of the Market saw a series of carefully-curated presentations available exclusively to PFM attendees and Upstream Live subscribers. While you need to subscribe to the Upstream Substack to get the full skinny on these – and many other – exciting projects, we thought we’d take the opportunity to give you a sneak peek at the day’s Upstream presentations.

Lighthouse Reports

An award-winning investigative newsroom, Lighthouse Reports lead the way when it comes to breaking huge public interest stories. The project they presented is a real-life story that reads like a thriller as it weaves a tale of big tech and secret surveillance.

Sanj Krishnan

Sanj Krishnan is a writer, actor, podcaster and former barrister. He came to Upstream Live to pitch The Lying Scotsman, a darkly comic biopic about a snake oil-selling huckster that might be torn from the annals of history but feels painfully relevant given more recent stories of greed, grift and boundless self-belief that have separated unwary investors from their hard-earned cash.

Pictoplasma

Founded in Berlin long before it was cool to found your creative company in Berlin, Pictoplasma is a curatorial organisation with its finger firmly on the rapidly-beating pulse of character design across animation, games, design and beyond. Their session focused on exciting next-gen creatives whose work is ripe for development into long-form storytelling.

Maya de Almeida Araújo

Maya is a director and visual artist with a fantastic project in hand: Water Within, an immersive screenplay inspired by the life of a groundbreaking conservationist that’s so vital that it already has Oscar-winning talent attached.

Hannah Davis

Hannah is part of the filmmaking team behind Gone, a biographical feature focusing on the life and experiences of an acclaimed violinist. The project is under option and in early development, with the team attending Upstream with the aim of formalising the core UK producing partnership and securing dedicated development funding for the script.

Sophie Cundale

An artist, filmmaker and writer, the FLAMIN team tipped Upstream to Sophie’s remarkable talent. Based on painstaking archival research, her project – titled For Those Who Threaten Us With Hell – explores sex work, activism and state violence.

Annette Mencke

Annette’s backstory reads like something John le Carré or Graham Green might have concocted: a champion athlete turned international development banker. Her extraordinary experience directly informed the episodic project she’s bringing to Upstream, which sees a web of politics, power, greed and corruption playing out beneath the impervious shield of diplomatic immunity.

We’re looking forward to seeing where Upstream takes these creatives, companies and projects next – to be the first to hear about other hand-picked projects from exciting new creatives, sign up here!