As someone who founded his theatre and film production company, Athenaeum Productions, at the age of just 16, it might not surprise you that filmmaker George Jaques is a bit of a hustler. “You never know how things are going to turn out,” he says, now 24, over a cuppa in a west London café. “There was something really freeing about not knowing how the industry worked, or what was right or wrong.
” Admittedly, relatively few 16-year-olds would know how the industry works either, but Jaques came in with no connections, no formal training, just a bunch of ideas and some mates who wanted to be a part of it, too. It’s how he met Jamie Flatters – co-writer and one of the leads of his debut feature, Black Dog (more on that in a minute) – and a whole host of other young creatives. Coming from a competitive rugby background, Jaques found solace in the theatre.
“You’re a part of something that felt like it mattered more than just winning or losing,” he ponders. After a few stints on screen – see: The Serpent Queen and A Town Called Malice – Jaques turned down his spot at the University of Bristol to pursue filmmaking. Fast forward to now, and Black Dog – Jaques’s British teen road-trip movie that premiered to standing ovations at last year’s London Film Festival – is now available to stream.
The film, which tackles an array of topics including grief, mental health and sexuality inspired by Jaques and Flatters’s own experiences, was made in just four weeks on a shoestring budget (“They always say you can’t make a film for less than £3 million – we did it with £500K”), with the support of a hardworking team that included Shakespeare in Love ’s David Parfitt. Jaques remembers making difficult calls: “If we don’t get the scene, we drop the scene. We can’t afford overtime.
” So what’s next? His sophomore feature, Sunny Dancer , a coming-of-age comedy about teens at a “cancer camp”, will start production next year, and the cast is crammed full of young British talent; Louis Partridge , a close friend of Jaques, Ruby Stokes and of course, Bella Ramsey , have already signed on. Watch this space. Black Dog is available to rent or buy now.
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