Ben Charles Edwards, a former photographer, is an emerging British director with a fearless approach to filmmaking. As a photographer, his work was exhibited at the Russian Museum of Modern Art, and this experience that led him into a visual fantastic concept of cinema. It was all based on a concept of post-human existence. Ben took his model to an air field just outside London and dressed her up in tin foil like an alien and shot her in front of the big spaceships landing. He called it the ‘Mean Green Mama From Out Of Space’.

In early 2012, Charles Edwards joined Sadie Frost to direct a 10-minute short film, starring Rudy Law (son of Sadie Frost and Jude Law). Suzie Lovitt is a quirky, avant-garde film. Frost continued to produce and perform in Charles Edwards’ films. The following year, she won Best Actress Award at The Hollywood Independent Film Festival for her role in the short movie Dotty, also written and directed by Charles Edwards. Most recently, he launched his feature debut called Set The Thames on Fire (2016), that portrays a grotesque retro-Dickensian dystopian London – click here in order to read our review of the film.

Ben Charles Edwards seeks an aesthetically and geometrically precise frame in his films. His perfectionism finds truce with his collaborators, including the make-up artists, the scriptwriter, the composer and the set designer, who all sing in unison towards a very fine and accurate composition. Set The Thames on Fire is a proper example that cinema is a collective form of art, and not an auteur product. Director of photography Sérgio Delgado (Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006) reveals the artificial side of a futuristic London, translating it into a formal accuracy closer to the best films by Peter Greenaway and Terry Gilliam.

Al Joshua wrote the script and the score for Set The Thames on Fire, a suitable complement to Charles Edwards’ storytelling. You can get in touch with Ben via his personal website here or the portal for Set The Thames on Fire.