Rothbiz reported last year on plans for some exciting new projects, including a new spa and a golf-themed bar complete with a simulator setup, from a local developer that specialises in restoring listed buildings and creating residential and commercial spaces.

The 2017 masterplan places a greater emphasis on town centre living and leisure, as opposed to traditional retail uses, in continuing the regeneration of Rotherham town centre.

Having previously converted the former Post Office on Main Street, created a boutique hotel in the historic George Wright Building, and restored the Empire Theatre, attention turned to an unused underground building next to the George Wright.

The Bunka opened earlier this year – a premium underground VIP golf simulator and leisure venue located on Snail Hill featuring state-of-the-art TrackMan technology, in-house PGA coaching and a members-only bar. A spa in the building is set to follow.

With the underground conversion well underway, things are looking up, with applicant, Mark McGrail of SME Holding Ltd, now unveiling plans for two padel courts to be constructed over the hotel’s car park that sits above the Bunka.

The plan involves the installation of a simple metal deck for two padel courts over the existing car park.

Advertisement

Plans, drawn up by Just Architecture, state: “The site is currently underutilised and offers an opportunity to enhance the character of the area.

“The development includes two padel courts accessed from the GW [George Wright] courtyard. It is believed that with this part of the development a sense of cohesiveness will be achieved given the access to the GW Hotel, Spa and simulated golf, all located within the same complex.

“The proposal for 2 No Padel Courts represents a sensitive and sustainable development opportunity that respects its historical context, makes efficient
use of underutilised urban land, and delivers an additional element to this urban entertainment venue.”

Given that the site is within the town’s conservation area, and the George Wright is a listed building, the plans state that the height and massing have
been sensitively designed. The required fencing and protective panels around the courts will be covered by canopies, which the plans state: “although quite high in relation to the GW Hotel it will have little impact upon the GW Hotel given its semi-transparent nature.” The development is also easily reversible due to its construction.

LED lighting is also proposed and to fit in the courts, the structure would go over the Snail Hill access road “but at a height that would not have any impact on vehicle access.”

Rothbiz reported last year on initial plans and the disposal of the property that Rotherham Council deemed to be of “low strategic value and limited potential for income.”

The Bunka website

Images: SME / Just Architecture

Rothbiz reported last year on plans for some exciting new projects, including a new spa and a golf-themed bar complete with a simulator setup, from a local developer that specialises in restoring listed buildings and creating residential and commercial spaces.

The 2017 masterplan places a greater emphasis on town centre living and leisure, as opposed to traditional retail uses, in continuing the regeneration of Rotherham town centre.

Having previously converted the former Post Office on Main Street, created a boutique hotel in the historic George Wright Building, and restored the Empire Theatre, attention turned to an unused underground building next to the George Wright.

The Bunka opened earlier this year – a premium underground VIP golf simulator and leisure venue located on Snail Hill featuring state-of-the-art TrackMan technology, in-house PGA coaching and a members-only bar. A spa in the building is set to follow.

With the underground conversion well underway, things are looking up, with applicant, Mark McGrail of SME Holding Ltd, now unveiling plans for two padel courts to be constructed over the hotel’s car park that sits above the Bunka.

The plan involves the installation of a simple metal deck for two padel courts over the existing car park.

Advertisement

Plans, drawn up by Just Architecture, state: “The site is currently underutilised and offers an opportunity to enhance the character of the area.

“The development includes two padel courts accessed from the GW [George Wright] courtyard. It is believed that with this part of the development a sense of cohesiveness will be achieved given the access to the GW Hotel, Spa and simulated golf, all located within the same complex.

“The proposal for 2 No Padel Courts represents a sensitive and sustainable development opportunity that respects its historical context, makes efficient
use of underutilised urban land, and delivers an additional element to this urban entertainment venue.”

Given that the site is within the town’s conservation area, and the George Wright is a listed building, the plans state that the height and massing have
been sensitively designed. The required fencing and protective panels around the courts will be covered by canopies, which the plans state: “although quite high in relation to the GW Hotel it will have little impact upon the GW Hotel given its semi-transparent nature.” The development is also easily reversible due to its construction.

LED lighting is also proposed and to fit in the courts, the structure would go over the Snail Hill access road “but at a height that would not have any impact on vehicle access.”

Rothbiz reported last year on initial plans and the disposal of the property that Rotherham Council deemed to be of “low strategic value and limited potential for income.”

The Bunka website

Images: SME / Just Architecture

Going out: Cinema

Normal
Out now
Ben Wheatley (Sightseers) returns with an action crime thriller starring Bob Odenkirk as a man serving as interim sheriff in the fictional little town of Normal, Minnesota, a place that turns out to have some unexpectedly big secrets involving the yakuza. Also starring Henry Winkler and Lena Headey.

Obsession
Out now
In this literal “be careful what you wish for” horror movie, Bear works in a music store and has a crush on co-worker Nikki. When given the opportunity he makes a magical wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world, leading to an extreme version of the condition mentioned in the title.
Orphan
Out now
Set in the aftermath of the failed 1956 revolution in Budapest, an angry young teenager, Andor (Bojtorján Barabas), is raised on idealistic stories of his missing father, but struggles with family secrets when a man appears claiming to be him – and falls far short of the image in Andor’s head. Historical drama from director László Nemes (Son of Saul).

The Christophers
Out now
Director Steven Soderbergh teams up with Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel for an art world caper in which the two unscrupulous adult children of a highly acclaimed elderly artist hire a younger artist to finish off some of his incomplete paintings – so that they can be sold off as the genuine article. Catherine Bray

Going out: Gigs

Doja Cat
19 to 29 May, tour starts Dublin
While last year’s sleek funk-pop opus Vie hasn’t hit the commercial peaks of the LA rapper and singer’s previous output, Doja Cat still knows how to put on an eye-popping show. Expect 27 songs, high-cut leopard print leotards and a provocativeperformer taking cues from 80s superstars such asPrince and Janet Jackson. Michael Cragg

Get Together
Various venues, Sheffield, 16 May
Southend goth overlords the Horrors join the likes of Welsh-Cornish wonder Gwenno and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor feature in this city-wide festival. Other highlights include “wonk pop” practitioners Lime Garden and London-based noise merchants Factory Floor. Michael Cragg

Tosca
Glyndebourne, nr Lewes, 21 May to 22 June & 4 to 30 August
The UK’s premier summer opera festival opens with its first ever production of Puccini’s classic thriller. Staged by US director Ted Huffman in Glyndebourne’s exquisitely intimate theatre, this Tosca promises to be up close and personal. Robin Ticciati conducts, with soprano Caitlin Gotimer leading two rising-star casts. Flora Willson

Submotion Orchestra
The Wardrobe, Leeds, 21 May
Leeds jazz festival’s fifth year boasts genre-fluid pianist-organist Kit Downes (25 May) and sax star Emma Rawicz (24 May) among the luminaries of its six-day run. The now 16-year-old Submotion Orchestra’s fusion of electronica, jazz and soulful ambience will be a big highlight of the opening-night gigs. John Fordham

Going out: Art

Godfried Donkor
Firstsite, Colchester, 22 May to 30 August
Travel from Colchester to west Africa and the Caribbean as this London-based Ghanaian artist weaves together stories of resistance from Boudicca to Yaa Asantewaa. Donkor mixes collage, painting and textile to talk about how identity, power and trade shape our world.

Delcy Morelos
Barbican, London, to 31 July
This Colombian installation artist is making a big muddy mess, filling the Barbican with huge mounds of earth. Morelos uses soil, clay and spices to totally transform spaces into heady immersive environments, inviting viewers to contemplate mud as the very material of life, all based on ideas gleaned from ancestral Andean and Amazonian knowledge.

Phantasmagoria
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, to 30 August
Video games and digital art aren’t necessarily what you’d associate with a gallery named after Britain’s most famous sculptor, but this exhibition deals with some seriously traditional subject matter: folklore, the occult and witchcraft. Artists including Most Dismal Swamp and the brilliant Joey Holder will drag enchantment, myth and magic into the present day.

James McNeill Whistler
Tate Britain, London, 21 May to 27 September
Tate Britain’s major summer show is the biggest European exhibition of this US painter’s work for more than 30 years. Whistler created some of the most instantly recognisable images of the 19th century: perfectly poised portraits, hauntingly penumbral landscapes, austere images of his own family, all with a haunting, innovative approach to painting. Eddy Frankel

Going out: Stage

Ania Magliano
21 May to 15 November; tour starts Reading
She was already a rising star but being cast in SNL has cemented Magliano’s place in the comedy firmament. Now the 28-year-old is hitting the road with Peach Fuzz, a show inspired by her newfound connection to her body and inability to relate to Sabrina Carpenter. Rachel Aroesti

Mother Courage and Her Children
Shakespeare’s Globe, London, to 27 June
The Globe’s artistic director and powerhouse performer, Michelle Terry, stars as Mother Courage, dragging her cart through a wasteland ravaged by war. Anna Jordan adapts a modern staging of Brecht’s defiant protest play. Miriam Gillinson

Little Shop of Horrors
Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne, to 23 May; touring to 20 June
A new actor-musician production of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s cult hit, with Amena El-Kindy as Audrey and Kristian Cunningham as Seymour, the flower shop assistant who stumbles across a truly monster plant – feeeeeeed me! MG

Uncaged+
The Mount Without, Bristol, 18 to 22 May
A coup for the Bristol dance venue, a guest performance from former Royal Ballet principal Edward Watson (18 & 19 May only) in works by choreographer Antonia Franceschi (ex-New York City Ballet, best known as the ballet dancer in the movie Fame). The venue itself is worth a visit, it’s a beautiful church conversion. Lyndsey Winship

Staying in: Streaming

Ponies
Sky Atlantic & Now, 22 May, 9pm
Haley Lu Richardson (The White Lotus) and Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) are two bereaved wives who take over their late husbands’ jobs as CIA spies in Soviet Moscow in a 1970s-set cold war thriller that doubles as a goofy buddy comedy. Adrian Lester co-stars as their handler.

The Boroughs
Netflix, 21 May
A new supernatural horror set in a retirement community where a malign entity is attempting to steal “time”. Cue wisecracks about how little the residents have left anyway, despite the stellar cast – Bill Pullman, Geena Davis, Alfred Molina – looking far too sprightly for such gags to land.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
Apple TV+, 20 May
From Euphoria to Margo’s Got Money Troubles, online sex work is TV’s current fixation, but this thriller takes a slightly different angle. She-Hulk’s Tatiana Maslany stars as divorced mother Paula who strikes up a rapport with a “cam boy” whose attempt to scam her results in murder.

Falling
Channel 4, 19 May, 9pm
Remember Fleabag’s hot priest? Well now we’re getting a hot priest and a hot nun courtesy of prolific screenwriter Jack Thorne. Keeley Hawes leads as the latter, whose romantic feelings for Paapa Essiedu’s man of the cloth leads them both into temptation. RA

Staying in: Games

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight
PC,PS5, Xbox, Switch 2; out 22 May
The caped crusader is back in Lego form as we follow the origins of the character, from newbie to Gotham legend. We’re promised a vast explorable city, a fresh, high-impact combat system and some classic foes.

Forza Horizon 6
PC, Xbox; out 19 May
The globe-trotting open-world racer returns, this time taking its fleet of exotic cars to Japan, where neon cities and Ghibli-esque rural landscapes provide the backdrop to an array of circuits and challenges. Keith Stuart

Staying in: Albums

Genesis Owusu – Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge
Out now
Released last September, Pirate Radio, the lead single from the third album by the Ghanaian-Australian rapper and singer, is a coiled spring of anger, aiming barbs at Elon Musk and Kanye. Its furious melding of punk and synthpop also permeates the galloping recent single Stampede.

Dua Saleh – Of Earth & Wires
Out now
The LA based, Sudanese-American polymath – as well as writing poetry, Saleh got their break playing Cal in Sex Education – returns with this lush second album. Bon Iver adds his quivering croon to Flood, while I Do, I Do fuses alt-R&B and Sudanese folk.

Drake – Iceman
Out now
Having survived Kendrick Lamar’s eviscerating takedown Not Like Us, Drake returns with his first solo album in three years. Originally teased back in 2024, then again in 2025, its release date was eventually confirmed via a giant melting ice sculpture in Toronto.

Rostam – American Stories
Out now
The erstwhile Vampire Weekender and producer for Haim and Clairo returns to his solo career with this follow-up to 2021’s Changephobia. Celebrating his Persian roots, alongside elements of Americana, it stretches out like a perfect road trip. MC

Staying in: Brain food

Making Space
Podcast
North London’s Roundhouse venue presents this enlightening series of conversations featuring guests such as the actor Daniel Kaluuya on the value of youth programmes, and former youth poet laureate Cecilia Knapp on exploring authentic human stories.

Five By Nine
YouTube
This design-focused YouTube channel posts engaging and clearly written guides to improving your home layout and colour palette. Its video The Psychology Behind Why Some Homes Feel Good But Most Don’t is a key primer.

The Black Power Station
BBC Sounds, 21 May
Luthando Zingela’s delightfully uplifting documentary journeys into an abandoned power station in South Africa that has been transformed into a makeshift musical hub. Ammar Kalia

Going out: Cinema

Normal
Out now
Ben Wheatley (Sightseers) returns with an action crime thriller starring Bob Odenkirk as a man serving as interim sheriff in the fictional little town of Normal, Minnesota, a place that turns out to have some unexpectedly big secrets involving the yakuza. Also starring Henry Winkler and Lena Headey.

Obsession
Out now
In this literal “be careful what you wish for” horror movie, Bear works in a music store and has a crush on co-worker Nikki. When given the opportunity he makes a magical wish for her to love him more than anyone else in the world, leading to an extreme version of the condition mentioned in the title.
Orphan
Out now
Set in the aftermath of the failed 1956 revolution in Budapest, an angry young teenager, Andor (Bojtorján Barabas), is raised on idealistic stories of his missing father, but struggles with family secrets when a man appears claiming to be him – and falls far short of the image in Andor’s head. Historical drama from director László Nemes (Son of Saul).

The Christophers
Out now
Director Steven Soderbergh teams up with Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel for an art world caper in which the two unscrupulous adult children of a highly acclaimed elderly artist hire a younger artist to finish off some of his incomplete paintings – so that they can be sold off as the genuine article. Catherine Bray

Going out: Gigs

Doja Cat
19 to 29 May, tour starts Dublin
While last year’s sleek funk-pop opus Vie hasn’t hit the commercial peaks of the LA rapper and singer’s previous output, Doja Cat still knows how to put on an eye-popping show. Expect 27 songs, high-cut leopard print leotards and a provocativeperformer taking cues from 80s superstars such asPrince and Janet Jackson. Michael Cragg

Get Together
Various venues, Sheffield, 16 May
Southend goth overlords the Horrors join the likes of Welsh-Cornish wonder Gwenno and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor feature in this city-wide festival. Other highlights include “wonk pop” practitioners Lime Garden and London-based noise merchants Factory Floor. Michael Cragg

Tosca
Glyndebourne, nr Lewes, 21 May to 22 June & 4 to 30 August
The UK’s premier summer opera festival opens with its first ever production of Puccini’s classic thriller. Staged by US director Ted Huffman in Glyndebourne’s exquisitely intimate theatre, this Tosca promises to be up close and personal. Robin Ticciati conducts, with soprano Caitlin Gotimer leading two rising-star casts. Flora Willson

Submotion Orchestra
The Wardrobe, Leeds, 21 May
Leeds jazz festival’s fifth year boasts genre-fluid pianist-organist Kit Downes (25 May) and sax star Emma Rawicz (24 May) among the luminaries of its six-day run. The now 16-year-old Submotion Orchestra’s fusion of electronica, jazz and soulful ambience will be a big highlight of the opening-night gigs. John Fordham

Going out: Art

Godfried Donkor
Firstsite, Colchester, 22 May to 30 August
Travel from Colchester to west Africa and the Caribbean as this London-based Ghanaian artist weaves together stories of resistance from Boudicca to Yaa Asantewaa. Donkor mixes collage, painting and textile to talk about how identity, power and trade shape our world.

Delcy Morelos
Barbican, London, to 31 July
This Colombian installation artist is making a big muddy mess, filling the Barbican with huge mounds of earth. Morelos uses soil, clay and spices to totally transform spaces into heady immersive environments, inviting viewers to contemplate mud as the very material of life, all based on ideas gleaned from ancestral Andean and Amazonian knowledge.

Phantasmagoria
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, to 30 August
Video games and digital art aren’t necessarily what you’d associate with a gallery named after Britain’s most famous sculptor, but this exhibition deals with some seriously traditional subject matter: folklore, the occult and witchcraft. Artists including Most Dismal Swamp and the brilliant Joey Holder will drag enchantment, myth and magic into the present day.

James McNeill Whistler
Tate Britain, London, 21 May to 27 September
Tate Britain’s major summer show is the biggest European exhibition of this US painter’s work for more than 30 years. Whistler created some of the most instantly recognisable images of the 19th century: perfectly poised portraits, hauntingly penumbral landscapes, austere images of his own family, all with a haunting, innovative approach to painting. Eddy Frankel

Going out: Stage

Ania Magliano
21 May to 15 November; tour starts Reading
She was already a rising star but being cast in SNL has cemented Magliano’s place in the comedy firmament. Now the 28-year-old is hitting the road with Peach Fuzz, a show inspired by her newfound connection to her body and inability to relate to Sabrina Carpenter. Rachel Aroesti

Mother Courage and Her Children
Shakespeare’s Globe, London, to 27 June
The Globe’s artistic director and powerhouse performer, Michelle Terry, stars as Mother Courage, dragging her cart through a wasteland ravaged by war. Anna Jordan adapts a modern staging of Brecht’s defiant protest play. Miriam Gillinson

Little Shop of Horrors
Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne, to 23 May; touring to 20 June
A new actor-musician production of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s cult hit, with Amena El-Kindy as Audrey and Kristian Cunningham as Seymour, the flower shop assistant who stumbles across a truly monster plant – feeeeeeed me! MG

Uncaged+
The Mount Without, Bristol, 18 to 22 May
A coup for the Bristol dance venue, a guest performance from former Royal Ballet principal Edward Watson (18 & 19 May only) in works by choreographer Antonia Franceschi (ex-New York City Ballet, best known as the ballet dancer in the movie Fame). The venue itself is worth a visit, it’s a beautiful church conversion. Lyndsey Winship

Staying in: Streaming

Ponies
Sky Atlantic & Now, 22 May, 9pm
Haley Lu Richardson (The White Lotus) and Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) are two bereaved wives who take over their late husbands’ jobs as CIA spies in Soviet Moscow in a 1970s-set cold war thriller that doubles as a goofy buddy comedy. Adrian Lester co-stars as their handler.

The Boroughs
Netflix, 21 May
A new supernatural horror set in a retirement community where a malign entity is attempting to steal “time”. Cue wisecracks about how little the residents have left anyway, despite the stellar cast – Bill Pullman, Geena Davis, Alfred Molina – looking far too sprightly for such gags to land.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
Apple TV+, 20 May
From Euphoria to Margo’s Got Money Troubles, online sex work is TV’s current fixation, but this thriller takes a slightly different angle. She-Hulk’s Tatiana Maslany stars as divorced mother Paula who strikes up a rapport with a “cam boy” whose attempt to scam her results in murder.

Falling
Channel 4, 19 May, 9pm
Remember Fleabag’s hot priest? Well now we’re getting a hot priest and a hot nun courtesy of prolific screenwriter Jack Thorne. Keeley Hawes leads as the latter, whose romantic feelings for Paapa Essiedu’s man of the cloth leads them both into temptation. RA

Staying in: Games

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight
PC,PS5, Xbox, Switch 2; out 22 May
The caped crusader is back in Lego form as we follow the origins of the character, from newbie to Gotham legend. We’re promised a vast explorable city, a fresh, high-impact combat system and some classic foes.

Forza Horizon 6
PC, Xbox; out 19 May
The globe-trotting open-world racer returns, this time taking its fleet of exotic cars to Japan, where neon cities and Ghibli-esque rural landscapes provide the backdrop to an array of circuits and challenges. Keith Stuart

Staying in: Albums

Genesis Owusu – Redstar Wu & the Worldwide Scourge
Out now
Released last September, Pirate Radio, the lead single from the third album by the Ghanaian-Australian rapper and singer, is a coiled spring of anger, aiming barbs at Elon Musk and Kanye. Its furious melding of punk and synthpop also permeates the galloping recent single Stampede.

Dua Saleh – Of Earth & Wires
Out now
The LA based, Sudanese-American polymath – as well as writing poetry, Saleh got their break playing Cal in Sex Education – returns with this lush second album. Bon Iver adds his quivering croon to Flood, while I Do, I Do fuses alt-R&B and Sudanese folk.

Drake – Iceman
Out now
Having survived Kendrick Lamar’s eviscerating takedown Not Like Us, Drake returns with his first solo album in three years. Originally teased back in 2024, then again in 2025, its release date was eventually confirmed via a giant melting ice sculpture in Toronto.

Rostam – American Stories
Out now
The erstwhile Vampire Weekender and producer for Haim and Clairo returns to his solo career with this follow-up to 2021’s Changephobia. Celebrating his Persian roots, alongside elements of Americana, it stretches out like a perfect road trip. MC

Staying in: Brain food

Making Space
Podcast
North London’s Roundhouse venue presents this enlightening series of conversations featuring guests such as the actor Daniel Kaluuya on the value of youth programmes, and former youth poet laureate Cecilia Knapp on exploring authentic human stories.

Five By Nine
YouTube
This design-focused YouTube channel posts engaging and clearly written guides to improving your home layout and colour palette. Its video The Psychology Behind Why Some Homes Feel Good But Most Don’t is a key primer.

The Black Power Station
BBC Sounds, 21 May
Luthando Zingela’s delightfully uplifting documentary journeys into an abandoned power station in South Africa that has been transformed into a makeshift musical hub. Ammar Kalia

Picturehouse Entertainment has acquired the UK and Ireland rights to A Town In Nova Scotia, the first feature film to have received investment from the LCR Production Fund.

The feature, directed by Babak Jalali and produced by Paradise City Films including Liverpool’s own Jennifer Monks of The Fold, stars Bill Nighy and Makram J Khoury. It is the first feature to receive investment from the LCR Production Fund and filmed across the Liverpool City Region earlier this year.

The film was co-written with Carolina Cavalli who collaborated with Jalali on Fremont. Further creatives include Saint Maud production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, Great Freedom cinematographer Crystel Fournier who also worked on Céline Sciamma’s movies Girlhood and Tomboy, Adolescence and Boiling Point costume designer Jessica Schofield, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie hair and makeup designer Caroline Rose and Aftersun BAFTA winning casting director Lucy Pardee.

The synopsis for the feature is as follows: Following a plea from his daughter to join her in Nova Scotia, widowed Irish senior Leon instead launches a crusade to make his aging Liverpool building safer after news of a tower fire in London. On a mission alongside his neighbour and closest friend, Saleh, Leon turns their fellow residents’ quiet lives upside down in a warm story of friendship, stubbornness and small acts of defiance.

Managing Director of Picturehouse Entertainment, Sara Frain, said: “Nighy is one of our most beloved actors working today, and as soon as we read this remarkable script, we knew we had to be involved. Writer/director Babak Jalali has created hilarious characters and a brilliant narrative that will truly resonate with UK audiences. It’s clever, humorous, and poignant.”

A Town In Nova Scotiais being produced by Naïma Abed and Émilie Georges for Paradise City (Call Me By Your Name), and Jennifer Monks for The Fold. The film is financed by BBC Film, BFI (awarding National Lottery funding), Liverpool Film Office (through the LCR Production Fund), Calculus, Hoopsa Films and Desmar.

Executive Producers are Kristin Irving for BBC Film, Ama Ampadu for the BFI, Christopher Moll for Liverpool Film Office, Sonny Gill and Peter O’Leary for Hoopsa Films, Naomi Despres and Michèle Marshall for Desmar, Brad Noel and Mariyah Dosani for Calculus. The film was developed with BBC Film.

Picturehouse Entertainment has acquired the UK and Ireland rights to A Town In Nova Scotia, the first feature film to have received investment from the LCR Production Fund.

The feature, directed by Babak Jalali and produced by Paradise City Films including Liverpool’s own Jennifer Monks of The Fold, stars Bill Nighy and Makram J Khoury. It is the first feature to receive investment from the LCR Production Fund and filmed across the Liverpool City Region earlier this year.

The film was co-written with Carolina Cavalli who collaborated with Jalali on Fremont. Further creatives include Saint Maud production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, Great Freedom cinematographer Crystel Fournier who also worked on Céline Sciamma’s movies Girlhood and Tomboy, Adolescence and Boiling Point costume designer Jessica Schofield, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie hair and makeup designer Caroline Rose and Aftersun BAFTA winning casting director Lucy Pardee.

The synopsis for the feature is as follows: Following a plea from his daughter to join her in Nova Scotia, widowed Irish senior Leon instead launches a crusade to make his aging Liverpool building safer after news of a tower fire in London. On a mission alongside his neighbour and closest friend, Saleh, Leon turns their fellow residents’ quiet lives upside down in a warm story of friendship, stubbornness and small acts of defiance.

Managing Director of Picturehouse Entertainment, Sara Frain, said: “Nighy is one of our most beloved actors working today, and as soon as we read this remarkable script, we knew we had to be involved. Writer/director Babak Jalali has created hilarious characters and a brilliant narrative that will truly resonate with UK audiences. It’s clever, humorous, and poignant.”

A Town In Nova Scotiais being produced by Naïma Abed and Émilie Georges for Paradise City (Call Me By Your Name), and Jennifer Monks for The Fold. The film is financed by BBC Film, BFI (awarding National Lottery funding), Liverpool Film Office (through the LCR Production Fund), Calculus, Hoopsa Films and Desmar.

Executive Producers are Kristin Irving for BBC Film, Ama Ampadu for the BFI, Christopher Moll for Liverpool Film Office, Sonny Gill and Peter O’Leary for Hoopsa Films, Naomi Despres and Michèle Marshall for Desmar, Brad Noel and Mariyah Dosani for Calculus. The film was developed with BBC Film.