Fairytale up for festival honour

Clive Tonge and Siobhan Fenton's film will go to Hollywood

The team of Teesside film-makers behind a dark modern-day fairytale are in the running for a top British film award.

Director Clive Tonge and producer Siobhan Fenton's animated movie, Emily and the Baba Yaga, is adapted from a traditional Russian story.

It features Baba Yaga - a cannibalistic old woman who lives in a dark forest and preys on children.

The film is nominated for Best New British Animation at the Edinburgh Film Festival to be announced on Wednesday.

Tonge and Fenton are lecturers in computer animation at the University of Teesside and Newcastle-based writer Rachel Mathews was commissioned to develop the screenplay.

Oscar hopes

Fenton said: "In traditional fairytales, the young girl or female figure tends to be portrayed as weak and what we wanted was someone that was not so feminine."

The film has already had success at Germany's Fantasy Film Fest earlier this summer and next month, it heads to Hollywood after Tonge was invited to the world's largest short film festival - the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival

Some 20 films featured at the LA festival have gone on to be nominated for an Oscar, with the last six taking home the coveted award.

Robert Arentz, an organiser of the LA Shorts Fest told the Tees film-makers: "We're honoured to be including your film in our festival this year and wish you good luck. LA Shorts Fest hopes that by screening the film, it will open doors to infinite possibilities."