Genevieve Gaunt is a talented British actress whose career has traversed stage and screen. From Michael Winterbottom’s The Face of an Angel and American soap opera The Royals to playing Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme in a production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins at Edinburgh Theatre Festival and voicing Lady Penelope in a recent Thunderbirds audiobook series, Gaunt boasts an eclectic array of credits. But her film career first kicked off as a child actor cast by Alfonso Cuaron in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Widely regarded as the best instalment in the fantasy franchise, Gaunt’s debu ..read more

Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel knew from the get-go that if she was going to tell a visceral story about school dynamics and the first childhood relationships made away from the family home, she would need to tell it from the child’s point of view. That visual perspective is partly why Playground, her feature-length debut, has earned widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike ever since it debuted in Un Certain Regard at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.  We recorded today’s episode during London Film Festival, in a conference room at the Mayfair hotel, so while the audio quality m ..read more

Award-winning casting director, Kharmel Cochrane has a reputation for championing new and diverse talent across film and television. As one of the few women of colour leading in the profession, her knack for finding the perfect cast has been utilised on the small screen in BAFTA-winning The End of the Fucking World, Sky One’s Intergalactic, and the Jodie Turner-Smith-led Anne Boleyn miniseries. In Film, she’s worked on John Wick: Chapter 4, Saint Maud and with Robert Eggers on all three of his feature films: The Witch, The Lighthouse and the upcoming The Northman.  Beginning in shorts an ..read more

Michael Lehmann is one of the most in-demand and prolific television directors in the US. He’s worked on such critically acclaimed series as Dexter, Californication, True Blood and American Horror Story, and has a new series starring Kristen Bell, The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, on Netflix right now. Some of his earlier film credits, including Airheads and Hudson Hawk, have earned welcome critical reappraisals in recent years but the greatness of his directorial debut Heathers is indisputable. Starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, the 1989 film is a ..read more

Actress and Producer Hester Ruoff has been working in the entertainment business for over a decade. You might know her as Debbie the paramedic in the long-running British soap opera Eastenders before her producing career kicked off with short films in 2018. It was around the time she starred in gritty crime thriller Villain, the directorial debut of Philip Barantini which cemented their working relationship. Barantini was in the market for producing partners to turn his acclaimed short film Boiling Point into a feature and Hester knew she needed to be involved. Starring Stephen Graham as a hea ..read more

 Fran Kranz has spent the last 20 years working as an actor across film, TV and stage. You might remember him from his role as Topher Brink in sci-fi series Dollhouse or as the final guy Marty in 2011 horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods. Now the American actor has decided to get behind the camera to write, produce and direct his very first feature film. Mass is a poignant drama about a pair of grieving parents who sit down to discuss the mass shooting they lost both their sons to. With the bulk of the film taking place in one room, there’s a theatre-like feel to the performances so it’s ..read more

Welcome to The First Film Club a podcast series dedicated to established and emerging talent from the film industry and the first feature that launched their careers. We started The First Film Club back in 2018 as a Q&A screening series with the same premise and have been able to bring some of the most celebrated directors and their feature film debuts to cinemas across London to hear them reflect on the process, battles and triumphs associated with the art of moviemaking. Now, with Stripped Media, we are excited to expand the format to include talent both in front of and behind the c ..read more