Paul Morrison

Born 1944, London. A drama and documentary maker, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (2000) and won the Welsh BAFTA for Best Film (2001) for his first feature film, SOLOMON AND GAENOR. Morrison’s other credits include: THE NIGHT SHOW, the dramas DEGAS AND PISSARRO FALL OUT, LUCREZIA BORGIA REVEALS ALL, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SCREAM; the documentaries A SENSE OF BELONGING, about the dilemmas of British Jewish identity (Channel Four); FROM BITTER EARTH, about drawings and paintings created in the concentration camps of World War II and UNSTABLE ELEMENTS, about the nuclear industry. Morrison is also the director of the acclaimed BBC1 film JOHN AND YOKO. He is adapting and plans to direct Linda Grant’s Orange Prize winning novel WHEN I LIVED IN MODERN TIMES.

Director’s statement

“This is a funny, warm, sharp and accessible coming-of-age film, in the spirit of BILLY ELLIOT and EAST IS EAST. Despite the specificity of its time and place, it’s a universal story, with universal values of acceptance and tolerance, an affirmation of the richness of heterogeneous identities”.