UK Oscar winner starts full movie

Arnold presented TV shows Motormouth and No 73 in the 1980s

UK director Andrea Arnold, who won an Oscar in 2005 for her short film Wasp, has started her first full-length film with director Lars von Trier's company.

Red Road, "a tale of obsession and forgiveness", has been backed by £10,960 of National Lottery funding.

Ex-children's TV presenter Arnold won the live action short film Oscar for gritty drama Wasp in February.

UK screenwriter Richard McBrien has also received £65,400 of lottery money to convert TV drama Trust into a movie.

Cinema adaptations

Set in Arnold's native Dartford, Kent, Wasp told the story of a young mother who, unable to find a babysitter, left her four young daughters outside a pub while on a date.

Her new film Red Road will be a collaboration between Glasgow-based Sigma Films and Dancer in the Dark director Lars von Trier's Zentropa Films.

Claire Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self, is being adapted for cinema by writer Adrian Hodges and producer Christian Colson, with £23,250 of lottery funding via the UK Film Council.

Guy Hibbert, writer of Bafta award-winning Channel 4 drama Omagh, has been awarded £22,750 of lottery funding for Unscathed, based on the autobiography of the same name by UN peacekeeper Major Phil Ashby.