The Intimacy Coordinator heads to Derry for Foyle Film Festival

Northern Irish producer’s Oscar-qualified thriller heads to Foyle Film Festival

Northern Irish producer Benjamin Jacob Smith is among the filmmakers behind The Intimacy Coordinator, a BAFTA- and Oscar-qualified thriller selected for this year’s Foyle Film Festival.

Smith, who grew up in Moorfields near Ballymena and whose family now lives in Templepatrick, began performing through the Lyric Drama Studio. His early experience on film and television sets included Disney Channel’s The Lodge, filmed in Northern Ireland.

It was there that he first met Sophie Simnett, who now stars in The Intimacy Coordinator. Over the past few years, Smith’s producing work has included projects for Northern Ireland Screen and Screen Ireland.

Written and directed by Louisa Connolly-Burnham, who also stars, the short has a striking premise: Kate is an intimacy coordinator. She is also a sex addict.

A dark, sexy, twisted thriller about intimacy, identity, power and compulsion, it asks what happens when the person charged with protecting other people’s boundaries starts crossing them herself.

The film has been included in The Hollywood Reporter’s Feinberg Forecast predictions for Best Live Action Short Film at the Oscars. Alongside Connolly-Burnham and Simnett, the cast includes Kieron Moore, Lindsay Duncan, Alexander Arnold, David Mumeni and Toby Williams.

Smith produced the film alongside Connolly-Burnham and Roxane Bourges. Connolly-Burnham’s previous short, Sister Wives, was longlisted for the Oscars, BAFTAs and BIFAs and acquired by Film4.

The film screens at the Nerve Centre, Derry, on Sunday 29 November at 1.15pm. Tickets are available through the Foyle Film Festival website.