Over the last 30 years, Raindance Film Festival has screened over a thousand films by a thousand filmmakers. Upon their debuts at Raindance, many filmmakers have gone on to do notable work in mainstream media. Let’s take a look back at some of the Raindance alumni that you might already know.
1) Daniel Myrick, Director
Daniel Myrick is best known for co-directing the 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project with Eduardo Sánchez. The film made its UK debut at the Raindance Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best Foreign Film (English Language). The Blair Witch Project catalysed a new phenomenon in film that engages audiences on a personal level through a “home movie” film format.
The “found-footage” genre of the film depicted a presentation style that made the film more realistic and thus more terrifying, which audiences were enthralled by. At the time of release, this low-budget film format was rudimentary, and so it had the ability to tap into the “true story” appeal, sparking rumours about the historical and factual nature of the film. The film went on to receive various accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award of the Youth, the Film Independent Spirit Award and the Online Film Critics Society Award for Top Ten Films of the Year, to name a few.
Twitter: @danielrmyrick
2) Craig Foster, Documentary Filmmaker
Craig Foster, like many others on this list, had his start at Raindance, where he debuted The Great Dance: A Hunter’s Story in 2000. He went on to direct and produce various successful film projects including My Hunter’s Heart (2010), Into the Dragon’s Lair (2010) and Dragons Feast (2014).
Recently in 2021, Craig Foster won an Academy Award and BAFTA for the Netflix Original Documentary Film My Octopus Teacher (2020). The critically-acclaimed film explores the filmmaker’s unusual friendship with an octopus in a kelp forest in South Africa. Filmed over the course of a year, the intimate interactions tell a touching story of a depressed and lonely man’s journey to recovery.
Instagram: @seachangeproject
3) Emily Greenwood, Director / Writer / Editor
Prior to her editorial work on various commercial successes, Emily Greenwood made a number of short films, one of which was nominated for the Best Digital Film at Raindance and featured on its Best of the Fest DVD.
The Button (2002) was a screenplay written and directed by Greenwood about a man who becomes paranoid about a button on his hotel room wall. The film was featured as part of Raindance’s 10th Anniversary Film Festival.
Since her work at Raindance, Greenwood has gone on receive credits as digital online editor in the James Bond films Spectre (2015) and Skyfall (2012), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), Les Misérables (2012), Wuthering Heights (2011), The Iron Lady (2011) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) amongst others.
Greenwood is the recipient of various film festival awards and was featured in MovieScope’s 2013 edition of “Women in Film”.
Twitter: @Greenwood_films
4) Trey Parker, Writer / Producer / Director
Before he co-created South Park and The Book of Mormon with Matt Stone, Trey Parker screened their film Cannibal!: the Musical (then known as Alferd Packer: the Musical) at the very first Raindance Film Festival in 1994! With a script co-written by Matt Stone, the film is a black comedy musical that tells the story of the only survivor of a doomed mining expedition and his newfound desire for human flesh. Trey Parker stars as miner-turned-cannibal Alferd Packer. The Raindance festival archives from that year state that “Everyone who meets Trey knows he’s going to be huge. He stays for four days, during which time approximately five dozen people buy him drinks and food.”
Alongside Matt Sloane, Parker has risen to success with South Park and The Book of Mormon, even winning an Oscar for Best Original Song for South Park’s “Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” The animated show has been running since 1997 and has won multiple Primetime Emmys. Parker then went on to co-write The Book of Mormon musical with Robert Lopez and Matt Stone. The musical was first staged in 2011 and won multiple Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Director.
Twitter: @Trey_Parker_
Instagram: @thesouthparkers
5) Kevin Willmott, Director / Screenwriter
Kevin Willmott is a director whose work was shown at Raindance Film Festival and has gone on to be greatly successful in the field. He first screened his film, Ninth Street, at Raindance in 1998. Now, he boasts an impressive resume including such films as Da 5 Bloods (2020) and C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004), which looks at what would have happened if the South had won the war. Willmott’s work as a screenwriter has been perhaps most notably featured in BlacKkKlansman (2018). He shares an Oscar for the script with Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Spike Lee. The movie received massive praise from critics and audiences for its humour and honest portrayal of the cultural and institutional racism that remains in America.
Instagram: @kevin.willmott
6) Gareth Edwards – Director
Rogue One was the second-highest grossing film in 2016 and the 20th-highest-grossing film of all time worldwide. The film followed the untold Star Wars story of how the blueprints to the Death Star were obtained and its visual effects and sound mixing earned it two Academy Award nominations. Director Gareth Edwards got his start at Raindance in 1996 with his film Arrivals, a monster movie set on the night of a violent meteor shower.
Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla film also shows his expertise in building monster movies and adventure films and was a massive box office hit, prompting the release of two sequels. Presently, Edwards has won a Primetime Emmy, a BAFTA award, and 2 British Independent Film awards. He also holds the title of the only person to have directed both a Godzilla and Star Wars film.
Instagram: @garethedwardsofficial
7) Kate Herron, Director / Writer / Producer
Loki (2021) and Sex Education (2019) are both series that have seen widely acclaimed reception in recent times, both having been nominated for and won various awards. However, before directing and producing streaming successes, Kate Herron began her career working on shorts. In 2017, she featured a 5-minute short entitled Smear at the 25th Raindance Film Festival. Smear follows Chloe who thinks she’s going in for a routine test but things do not go as planned. Herron wrote this film to explore pap-smear anxiety in the hopes that the film will encourage more women to go for cervical cancer screenings.
Since her stint at Raindance, Herron has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for Loki, as well as received numerous other accolades from the Rolling Stones, British GQ, The Guardian and Variety.
Twitter: @iamkateherron
Instagram: @herronthatkate
8) Baran bo Odar, Director
Dark is Netflix’s first German-language original series and has received critical acclaim for its complicated narrative and superb acting and tone of the show. The show tells the story of a time-travel mystery involving the disappearance of local children spanning from the late 19th century to 2053. The science-fiction thriller was directed by Raindance alum Baran bo Odar, who received a Grimme-Preis, Germany’s most prestigious television award, for Dark season 1.
Bo Odar has also been nominated for a German Film Award for Best Fiction Feature Film and Best Screenplay for Who Am I – No System is Safe, a techno-thriller about a computer hacker group in Berlin. He screened his 60-minute film Under the Sun at the 2006 Raindance festival, which tells the story of misfit Viktor taking drastic measures to feel accepted. The film was nominated for Best Debut Feature at Raindance Film Festival.
Twitter: @baranboodar
Instagram: @baranboodar
9) Ildiko Enyedi – Director / Writer
Ildikó Enyedi is a Hungarian film director and screenplay writer most well known for her film On Body and Soul (2017). This film revolves around workers at a slaughterhouse who find that they can communicate with each other via their dreams. It went on to win the Golden Bear at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for a Foreign Language Academy Award. Enyedi screened her film, Simon Magus, at Raindance 1999. Simon Magus tells the story of a psychic called by the Parisian police when they are faced with a crime they can’t solve.
Enyedi’s success has earned her multiple awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and a nomination for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. She has directed eight feature films.
10) Christopher Nolan, Director / Producer / Screenwriter
11-time Academy Award winner best known for The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014) and Dunkirk (2017), Christopher Nolan, debuted his breakthrough film Memento for the first time in the UK at Raindance Film Festival in 2000. He was also a recipient of the Filmmaker in Residence Award at Raindance that same year.
20 years later, the time-bending mystery thriller continues to be a cult classic that paves the way for detailed non-linear storytelling and cerebral dives. Memento was a unique film for its time, but has gone on to define Nolan’s unconventional and distinct filmmaking technique. The film gained widespread recognition, winning Nolan his first Academy Award and laying the foundation for the rest of his career.
About the Authors
Nina Menon is an interdisciplinary artist and recent graduate in BA (Hons) Drama and Theatre Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. She spends her time experimenting with mixed media art and interning at Raindance.
Maggie Courtney is a Sociology and Journalism major with an emphasis in Strategic Communication currently attending the University of Missouri. She worked for the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri in Spring 2022 as a Hospitality and Guest Relations Coordinator and has interned this summer with Raindance as a Communications Intern.
