Old Windows Looks Great

1st February 2022

Old Windows, the subtle and sophisticated seventeen minute follow up to Holbrook’s world-dominating previous films Hungry Joe (Described by SOTW as “One of the UK’s great modern horror shorts!) and Hollow (winner of best cinematography at Rhode Island) is currently submitting to film festivals worldwide, with its world premiere already locked in at the BIFA-Qualifying Manchester Film Festival this March.

Old Windows stars Gavin & Stacey’s Larry Lamb in a lead role that he was simply born to play and is backed up by the talents of breakthrough actress Laura Bayston, who also served as the film’s writer and producer. The film, set in the 90s, tells the story of a struggling café owner who’s mundane life is upended when a mysterious gentleman comes in for tea and cake.

The film was shot by emerging Director of Photography James Oldham and was backed by the fledgling, female-fronted production company Jackalor films, with producers Jackie Howard and Laura Bayston at the helm.

Paul Holbrook is an award-winning writer/director. A proud working-class Bristolian, he was born and bred in Hartcliffe – a rough, impoverished council estate in the South West of England.

Despite a lack of formal education, Paul started out as a screenwriter, writing feature-length scripts for the spec market and made encouraging progress, advancing in various industry-backed screenwriting competitions including Page, Shore, Screencraft and in 2018 made the final 1% of The Academy Nicholl Fellowship (The Oscars). He has also made the final stages of the BBC Writersroom, the later stages of iShorts and has been selected for industry-backed mentoring and career development through Creative England, Bafta and the BFI.

After years of honing his writing craft, Paul eventually moved into film-making too, driven by a passion to develop and direct his own work he has written and directed a plethora of successful short films across varying genres including comedy, drama, sci-fi and horror. His work fuses real-world authenticity, British social realism and genre flair and his films have screened and won numerous awards at Bafta, BIFA and Oscar-qualifiers festivals around the world including Palm Springs, BFI London, Encounters and Aesthetica.

Paul is a returning member of the BaftaXBFICrew programme, has been funded by BFI Network and Enter The Pitch and is in early development with BFI on his first feature, based on the award-winning short Hungry Joe. He is shopping around his autobiographical coming-of-age feature Snog and is in active development on an exciting TV comedy called Ordinary Joe.

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