Marc Isaacs
2021
Calais: The Last Border
Marc Isaacs
A stark portrait of a town in decline. Brilliant juxstaposition between the scoff faced English day trippers searching for cheap booze, and the cold, snivelling asylum seekers existing on the streets. Thrown into the mix are two English ex pats, trying to make money against the odds.
Calais: The Last Border
Men of the City
Marc Isaacs
In Men of the City, Isaacs takes a more stylised approach to the lives of workers in the City of London during the recent financial meltdown, balancing sensitive portraits of diverse individuals striving to retain their dignity and humanity in the midst of the crisis. Strong human characters are at the heart of all of Isaacs' work, and with these films he continues to create a unique vision of modern Britain.
Men of the City
Touched by Murder
Mārtiņš Meiers, Marc Isaacs
The body of a young Polish woman is found in a suitcase on a London canal adjacent to a block of flats. The filmmakers invite the residents to reflect on how the murder has affected them. Through their stories we are provoked to think about our own relationship to the strangers living in our midst.
Touched by Murder
All White in Barking
Marc Isaacs
All White in Barking is a compassionate and illuminating documentary probing the attitudes of Barking's white residents toward their new immigrant neighbours. Isaacs is an unseen, but prominent, presence, questioning prejudices and prying at preconceptions with remarkable results to produce a vivid picture of the attitudes and perceptions at the heart of an increasingly multicultural Britain.
All White in Barking
Philip and His Seven Wives
Marc Isaacs
Philip and His Seven Wives (2006) a film made for the BBC’s prestigious Storyville strand, tells the intriguing story of a former messianic rabbi who believes that he communicates directly with God. Isaacs’ captivating and intimate documentary is a portrait of this unconventional family whose lives revolve around faith and obedience to the head of the household.
Philip and His Seven Wives
The Road: A Story of Life & Death
Marc Isaacs
Marc Isaacs, Iqbal Ahmed
On the oldest Roman road in the capital, filmmaker Marc Isaacs weaves together numerous poignant stories of loss and the search for belonging into a tapestry of the human experience. Keelta a young Irish woman leaves home to build a new life for herself on the road where Billy, the old Irish labourer is struggling to find a meaning to his life. Peggy, a 95 year old Jewish refugee from Vienna and Brigitte, a German born former air hostess, have both suffered bad husbands, whilst Iqbal, an unassuming Indian hotel concierge, awaits the arrival of his wife from Kashmir. A film that forces you to recognise the struggles and preoccupations of its characters as our own.
The Road: A Story of Life & Death
Outside the Court
Marc Isaacs
They arrive, they smoke, they wait - armed robbers seeking redemption, life-long thieves, addicts and anxious fathers of wayward children. Hard exteriors hide soft centres, old lives exist in young bodies - ordinary people awaiting judgement on an unlovely stretch of pavement outside a London magistrates' court. Whilst waiting for their cases to be heard they reveal their lives, and the complexities of the human soul are laid bare. Tense and intimate conversations with the filmmaker illuminate stories that the magistrates hear daily. Director Marc Isaacs spent three months outside Highbury Magistrates Court and, in doing so, demonstrates how the eye of the camera has the ability to delve much deeper into character and motivation than the eye of the law. Consequently, the more we get to know the characters in this film, the harder it is to make easy judgements. Whilst the court must judge, the filmmaker need not.
Outside the Court
The Filmmaker's House
Marc Isaacs
When the Filmmaker is told his next film must be about crime, sex or celebrity to get funded, he takes matters into his own hands and begins shooting in his home with a cast of characters connected to his own life. We first meet two English builders, employed to replace the garden fence, temporarily removing the barrier between the house and a Pakistani neighbour. This introduces the film’s central theme of hospitality which ultimately finds its expression when a homeless Slovakian man charms the Filmmaker’s Colombian cleaner to let him in and tests everyone's ideas of the expectations and boundaries between host and guests.
The Filmmaker's House
Someday My Prince Will Come
Marc Isaacs
Set in an isolated coastal village, Someday My Prince Will Come (2005) is narrated in rhyming couplets by 11-year-old Laura-Anne as she embarks on a quest to find her ‘prince’. Rare in its acceptance of kids on their own terms and both heartrending and hilarious in its sincerity.
Someday My Prince Will Come
Oxygen: The Old Man and His Bed
Marc Isaacs
There are 94 naturally occurring elements, from Hydrogen to Plutonium. Together they make up everything in the world. The stories of the elements are intimately connected to the stories of our own lives. Everything we use and create is made from them. Our own bodies are mostly made from just 6 of the elements. They affect our lives in countless ways, and their stories reveal our relationship with our resources and the patterns of our economies. They are the untold stories of our physical existence.
Oxygen: The Old Man and His Bed
Moments of Silence
Marc Isaacs
Built from the ground up from a series of introspective shots throughout Marc Isaacs's significant body of non-fiction work, Moments of Silence captures people feeling overwhelmed by difficult thoughts, pause and fall silent, seemingly dwelling on their past, contemplating their current ordeals, or worrying about their future.
Moments of Silence
