EXCLUSIVE: Award-winning documentary filmmaker Pinny Grylls, and award-winning filmmaker, video artist and actor Sam Crane have signed with Anonymous Content for representation.
The duo teamed to direct their debut feature, Grand Theft Hamlet, which won the Documentary Grand Jury Award at SXSW this year. The movie documents their journey to stage a live performance of Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto, which won a Stage Innovation Award. The film has been long listed for four British Independent Film Awards and will be distributed in cinemas in the U.K. and US in 2025 and on MUBI. Additionally, the project garnered numerous awards including The Frontier Competition Grand Prize at DMX Docs, Vancouver International Film Festival Audience Award and Best Documentary at SITGES, and was screened at HOT DOCS, Vision Du Reel, CPHDox and more this year.
Deadline’s Damon Wise praised about Grand Theft Hamlet, “The premise is a winner, and there’s a lot to enjoy as Mark Oosterveen and Sam talk iambic pentameters while bullets fly, planes crash and bazookas unload.”
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Grylls’ began her career co-founding Birds Eye View – the first U.K film festival to celebrate women and non-binary filmmakers. In 2008, her debut short documentary Peter and Ben premiered at IDFA, winning awards at festivals including Aspen, London Short Film Festival and SXSW. Additional documentary credits include Channel 4’s Who Do You Think You Were?, The Guardian’s Thank You Women, BBC/National Theatre’s The Hour and The Royal Opera House’s Becoming Zerlina. Her focus has often been telling the behind-the-scenes stories of performers in theatre, ballet and opera. In 2024 Grylls won the BFI Chanel Award for creative audacity.
Prior to Grand Theft Hamlet, Crane released his short machinima film We Are Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On, which garnered numerous accolades including Critics Choice at The Milan Machinima Festival, “Best Video Art” at Athens Digital Arts Festival, was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize and longlisted for The Aesthetica Art Prize. On the theatre side, he is an accomplished stage actor known for starring in various West End and Broadway productions including Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, Farinell and The King and 1984. As a prolific screen actor, his credits include Napoleon (Apple), The Crown (Netflix), Transatlantic (Netflix), Van Der Valk (PBS), The Trial of Christine Keeler (BBC), COBRA (Sky), Poldark (BBC), Endeavour (ITV), and Call The Midwife (BBC). He has recently completed filming The Deal, a six part drama series for Arte/Les Films Pelleas about the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Crane continues to be represented by Michael Emptage & Michael Hallett (Emptage Hallett) in the UK.
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