CURRENT PROJECTS

1. CUCKOO IN THE NEST is a drama set in Ireland in the aftermath of the IRA troubles.

Feature Film

Written and Directed by: Jane Sanger

Logline: A propulsive drama, powerful, moving, mesmerising. A seemingly innocent young girl who stays with the Irish family is a Cuckoo in the Nest as her troubled past brings devastation and death.

Short Synopsis:

Billy struggles after being involved with the accidental killing of a British man in N Ireland at the end of The Troubles, inveigled by his childhood friend Jimmy. Billy and his pregnant wife escape to her uncle's cottage in Scotland to make a new start. Life is not easy and in exchange for help with the children, so his wife can return to work, a young lady enters their life. A series of accidents that follow seem more than mere coincidence. Who exactly is Megan? She seems to know some uncomfortable truths about their past life. She must be dealt with before complete havoc ruins their family's life. Jimmy suggests snipering her to stop her interference in a crime that could send them to jail.

Please look at www.facebook.com/cuckoointhenest

Mood Board and further photos on: https://www.pinterest.com/elanstitch/cuckoointhenest

2. BLOODY LOVE is a tense, coming of age, drama thriller adapted from an award winning play by David Fielding by Jane Sanger and Di Lofthouse

Either Feature Film or 8 part tv series

Synopsis:

One night on Hampstead Heath, teenager Joe is found stabbed to death. Everyone of his friends have the means to kill him but did they have a motive, or was it a stranger? A tangled web of secret relationships and long held resentments slowly surface as each friend falls under police scrutiny. The friendship group once tight, now unravels but still no-one will break and betray anyone else, so it's hard to pinpoint the killer. Now a year after the unsolved crime the young people meet again to air their views and to push the police to find the killer. A story of the darkest secrets, love and loss.

PRODUCER: DI LOFTHOUSE - In Preproduction

facebook: www.facebook.com/bloodylovefilm - see character breakdown on here and casting details

The pilot for this series was written at NFTS under the tutillage of Peter Ansorge, ex head of Ch 4 drama commissioning and Drama BBC Producer.

In the sleepy town of Brambly Beeches, in the home counties, everyone knows everyone's business, there are no secrets. Its in a perfect position for commuting to London yet enjoying the country life. It boasts one of the best co-ed private schools in the country and seven of the reamining grammar schools, so house prices soar as families fight to buy them and ensure their children places at these schools.

When Vanessa, a beautiful and extremely rich woman finds her builder Greg has disappearred, she can think only of the inconvenience of not having her orangerie finished for her daughter's birthday. Only Perry his father truly wants to hunt him out, the police are not interested.

Mateo, a Peruvian and BAFTA nominated documentary maker comes to the village as his wife was born there. He starts to quietly investigate whilst outwardly making a new documentary on the local commune where Greg and Perry live.

Despite its perfect facade he gradually uncovers many secrets that lead him into the tortuous discovery of a Victorian Ice Cave, torture chamber and many undercurrents of criminal and immoral behaviour in the community.

4. DAGGER OF ICE -fantasy drama/thriller

Written and Directed by Jane Sanger

Vanessa is depressed that she cannot have a second child and devotes all her time to her perfect six year old daughter Bebe. Her stepdaughter from he husbands first marriage is resentful at being overlooked. Tom is posted to rural Canada with his job and Vanessa tries to fit in to a newlife. At a mothers lunch that over runs she is late for the school pick up, Bebe attempts to walk home alone and is run over and killed.

Vanessa is overwhelmed with guilt and grief and retreats into herself ignoring her husband and stepdaughters feelings, so they eventually leave for a while to live with his mother. Gradually Vanessa recovers and resurrects her former life as a wildlife photographer. In the snowy forest she discovers a beautiful snowchild and her brother. They lead her into a hidden wild world of strange creatures and other lives. She is introduced to Hunter an imposing but taciturn woodsman and he reluctantly agrees to teach her forest ways.

All is not as it seems in the beautiful white world and the creatures and snow children are hounded by a malevolent force. Vanessa witnesses a horrific murder. She must persuade her husband to return and help her save the snow children and herself from this evil. Her family don't believe her fantastical descriptions and its a race against time to make them understand that her boundaries between imagination and reality are not blurred.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dagger-of-Ice/340603956131808?ref=hl

Beautiful Mood board on: https://www.pinterest.com/elanstitch/dagger-of-ice/

My grandfather was employed by the Indian Mint in Calcutta from 1926 and following the Great Crash in 1929 stayed on for another 16 years til 1947 just before Indian Independence The story is based on the letters he sent home and those written to him. I am presently writing a script which incorporates characters into this partly fictional story.

TV Series - Involving forced marriage, social pretensions over class and race and The Fishing Fleet, the nickname for the unmarried women who came to India in the Raj looking for husbands.

Wilfred a goldsmith has married a lady from the upper middleclass, the beautiful spoilt and pampered Eleanor, the daughter of a rich merchant. Schooled by governesses and finished at a school near Versailles with her sisters, her parents feel she has married beneath her to a man who works with his hands. However there is something very flawed about Eleanor and the family must take whatever offer of marriage comes her way.

A doting mother, she finds life very difficult in her "reduced"circumstances and when Albert is given the coveted post as artist engraver to the Indian Mint he travels alone. On her visit with her young daughter she hates the heat, and is looked down on by the army and civil service wives and not allowed into the best clubs. Broken she returns to the UK, leaving her husband alone in India for 10 years with one visit home per year.

Lonely, Wilfred takes a beautiful Indian mistress. He has begged Eleanor to come out again with both his son and daughter and she makes one more visit. Her father has died and left her with the equivalent of £2 million in today's money. During this time there is a terrible scandal as the body of Priti, Wilfred's mistress is found in the press room, ritually and weirdly displayed over the press. The scandal must be hushed up but Leo, Albert's young son wants to find out more.

Fast forward to modern times and Anushi has been left her great grandmother's belongings in Calcutta. Curious about her heritage she leaves her medical studies for a sabbatical and uncovers the scandal of the murder which she is determined to solve.

Nightrider is a 8 part historical adventure /drama for television

Written and Directed by Jane Sanger

Little is known in contemporary times about The White Slave Trade, but it is a historical fact. This was carried out by the Sultans of Morocco for over 130 years til the Americans sailed to Rabat and freed the remaining slaves and overcame the Sultan.

Our story begins in 1714 as George I comes to the throne and Barbary Pirates were being sent by the Sultan Ismail Moulay to the south European Coast and particularly to Great Britain on the West Country , South Irish and South Welsh coasts to capture strong young men to build his palace and red head girls in particular for his hareem.

The story follows the plight of the Fellowes, a squires family living in the West Country, when one stormy night their daughter Elizabeth, a red haired beauty and her brother John go missing as the Barbary Pirates attack, there can be only one dreadful conclusion. Lady Mary is forbidden to visit the local white witch, but she disobeys her husband. Esther tells her the children are still alive. Sir Richard goes to the Prime Minister to seek audience with the King to send ships to bring his beloved children and all the other slaves back. He is met with a brick wall.

Determined to do something, he and the other local squires meet and decide to fund the earliest known coastguard: The Nightriders, who will patrol and protect the coast from further attacks. Another stormy night a year later a lone Nightrider rides up to the Manor door and deposits a very wet and feverish young lady there and rides off before he can be questioned. Lady Mary takes her in and is shocked to see it’s her heavily pregnant daughter, her hair dyed brown from walnut juice. Elizabeth is struck dumb and so the story contuinues.

There are eight strands to the story interwoven–

The story of the country squire and family, Sir Richard, Lady Mary and their children Elizabeth and John and further relatives
The Sultan Ismail Moulay’s Court
The Barbary Pirates
The Nightriders
Simon Pargiter , the doctor’s son and his time in the Sultan’s court and his attempt to escape with Talwyn a fisherman’s daughter from the village
George I court and Robert Walpole the Prime Minister
Benjamin, Sir Richard’s brother in law, married to Margory his sister, with one son and away in the West Indies with his mulatto mistress and two children.
Esther the witch and soothsayer

Please follow and like the facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nightrider/330478560489409

Twitter: @nightridertv

For the mood board please look at :https://www.pinterest.com/elanstitch/nightrider/

7.THE RUSSIAN SECRET - a 4 part drama tv series

Darcy 30's, a married mum of 3 children, struggles to make ends meet and

is shocked to receive a summons from a solicitor. She has been left a substantial amount in a will. But she has no wealthy relations, so where does the money come from? She has to sign to say that she will keep the contents secret before the will is read. Nikolai Naryshkin (Nick to her) a far distant memory, was an older man who chatted to her when she was a barmaid as a student, but he is long forgotten and has never seen her since. His will reveals dark secrets and a mission that must be completed before she can claim the riches that will set her family up for life.

8. THE HALF STITCHED HEALING CLUB - a 6 part drama tv series

In a sleepy, home counties village, people rarely move or move away. A group of older, characterful village ladies run a local art and craft group where they are concentrating on making memory quilts. Then a very attractive, older, new age woman joins their midst, a newcomer to the village, a healer and shaman. She isn’t like the other ladies who go to the stitching club or play bowls, she’s like a breath of fresh air. Rivalries, long held resentments and dark secrets begin to unfurl.

With her serene looks, air of confidence and other worldliness she dazzles them all. Her mother has died and she has temporarily returned to the village where she was brought up, and suddenly people do remember her. Whilst picking apart her past they remember their own.

Then she invites them all to South America to a free healing workshop, a woman’s circle she is holding. Suspicious at first and dead against it the ladies find excuses not to go. However, feeling that life has more to offer than this sheltered village, with holidays in France and Spain, they gradually agree to an adventure. Will all their traumas and bad experiences be healed as they continue making memory quilts in the warm sun of Ecuador? Whilst eating food they have never tried, doing yoga, meditation, taking mountain walks, exploring the local towns and eventually taking Ayahuasca with a shaman, many experiences open to them and they determine to change things in their lives back home.

A feel good, dark comedy about English Life.

1. Teen Prophet: 20 mins Mimi a whizz at science and a secret tae kwon do champion hears a "voice" when visiting Joan of Arc's grave with her mother. Joan when a teenager changed history and the voice tells her she is chosen to change world history. Reluctant and unbelieving Mimi set off on her first mission to stop a nuclear bomb being launched. She cannot believe that anyone will listen to a teenage girl in this patriarchal and ageist society. How will she accomplish this feat?

2. Hidden Angels: 15 mins Three unlikely and lonley people meet and though they dislike and distrust each other at first. They then find that each has something to give that makes the other's lives better. The characters are Femi an orphan and illegal immigrant who must remain under the radar of authority to pretect herself and her little brother, Jaimie a gay man, his tired drag act needs revamping to give him that big break that he craves, and Mr Maximov an elderly Jew, a survivor of the holocaust, lonely and impoverished who still mourns the wife that died thirty years ago.

3. Ape Child: 15 mins Marcy and Rob have the perfect life, good looking and successful with two beautiful blonde boys but they long for a daughter. When a scan shows that the pregant Marcy is to have a girl they are thrilled. However when the girl is born she has hypertrichosis lanuginosa, in other words she is very hairy and ugly. As time goes on the toddler does not speak only grunts and is very volatile. Finally Marcy decides to send the child to a special institution never to return so that she can get on with her erstwhile perfect existence.

4. He Says, She Says: 10-15 mins Domestic violence against a man is talked of very little. Here we see the viewpoint from the possibly warped mind of both husband and wife in the outwardly perfect marriage. However when the husband dies after an accident whose account are we to believe, was the wife the violent one or was it the husband?

5.. The Innocent One: 15 mins Madeleine, a simple country girl comes to The Sisters of Mercy convent in the late 1800's as a novice nun. Here the sisters take in unmarried mothers and give the babies to good catholic homes for adoption. When Madeleine gives birth herself it's a shock as her pregnancy has gone un noticed. She claims it's a virgin birth and the baby is the new Christ. When stigmata appear on her hands the Mother Superior and Priest seize the opportunity and allow her to become a pilgrimage spectacle. They allow this in order to ask for money for their new stained glass window. Madeleine is not so simple and pious as she seems and one day both she, the baby and all the money disappear.

6.. Escape: 10 mins Maggie and John are celebrating their 5 year wedding anniversary by going on a road trip to Ireland. They pick up a seemingly harmless man, a hitchhiker, on the journey. At first he is benign but he gradually asks more and more probing questions and seems to know a lot more about their lives then a stranger should. He opens a can of worms with disastrous consequences.

7. The Haircut - Gay has been a conventional housewife for 25 years, uncomplaining and compliant,she is demeaned by her husband and two young daughters. Treated as a chattel for her good looks and cudos that she brings Franklyn is her husband she never says a word against him. But inside she is seething and a chance leaflet through the door from a Women's movement leads to an act of defiance.

8. Barak - A story about an east end family with a far right, neo nazi father who foster a little Syrian boy who is gay. Written by Cheryl Neve and Jane Sanger

Please email me for a NDA reading of any of the scripts if you would like to read with a view to buy : info@luminofilms.co.uk

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