John Hay

John Hay read for a BA (Hons) in Film at Reading graduating with a Distinction for his Final Film. After leaving university he went on to get a number of assignments directing for British television. These included seminal dramatizations of two epic poems by Heathcote Williams. Falling for a Dolphin, with its soundtrack by Enya, was made as a Christmas Special for ITV, while Autogeddon, which starred Jeremy Irons in his Oscar-year, was produced for the BBC. Autogeddon went on to win five international awards including the Jury Prize at Shanghai and was described by The Independent as being "As close to genius as television gets." The success of Autogeddon led to two projects working with Al Pacino. Every Time I Cross the Tamar I Get into Trouble, was a tongue-in-cheek short about Pacino's personally-financed feature The Local Stigmatic. The film was shown on Channel 4 and then distributed theatrically on the art-house circuit in the US. Subsequently, Pacino asked John to work with him on the British segments of Twentieth Century Fox's Looking for Richard which starred Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin and, of course, Pacino himself. Meanwhile, John was already working on The Steal, a TV movie for HBO starring Alfred Molina, Helen Slater and Stephen Fry. The film, which was produced by Gary Kurtz, was picked up for theatrical release by Warner Bros. in the UK. John's television work includes a number of critically-acclaimed ratings-winners for the BBC including Cause of Death, a feature-length, hospital drama, produced by Lorraine Heggessey, which went on to win the Golden Gate Spire in San Francisco; an Indian period drama The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag starring Jason Flemyng, Geoffrey Palmer and Jodhi May, and an adaptation of the children's classic, Stig of the Dump, which won a BAFTA and an EMMY. John's feature debut was Pathe's There's Only One Jimmy Grimble starring Robert Carlyle, Ray Winstone and Gina McKee. Described by the Daily Express as "The best British Film in ages," the picture won the Bear for Best Family Feature at the Berlin Film Festival. This headed a year in which There's Only One Jimmy Grimble won ten international awards: Best Feature at Giffoni; Best Feature at The European Film Festival, Antwerp; Best Feature at BUFF, Malmo; Best Feature at Ale Kino, Poznan; Best Feature at KinderFilm, Vienna; Best Feature at Festival du Film Pour Enfants, Lans en Vercors; Best Feature at Kyoto, Japan and Best Director at Isfahan, Iran. It also opened the Best of British Film Festival in New Zealand. John went on to make The Truth About Love starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Dougray Scott and Jimi Mistry which was sold by Lakeshore in forty territories worldwide. The film performed well internationally and, in South Korea, it became a surprise number one at the box office outperforming all the US studio releases in its opening weekend. John is attached to The Walnut Tree for Impact and is directing an adaptation of Whitbread award winner, Jamila Gavin's Journey Through Midnight. The film was developed by Granada Films and stars Timothy Spall and Jimi Mistry. John is also producing Moon & the Dolphin, a short animation he co-wrote for the Oscar-winning Russian animator, Alexander Petrov.