Marilyn Milgrom
stage 2 script consultant
In a long career in storytelling Marilyn has worked as an actor, casting director, TV director and producer (of both drama and documentaries) and short film producer. Since 2012, she has been script consultant to the BFI Film Fund where the films she has developed include Carol Morley’s The Falling and Out of Blue, Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy, Sean McAllister’s documentaries A Syrian Love Story & A Northern Soul, Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette, Sally Potter’s The Party, Richard Billingham’s Ray & Liz, Clio Barnard’s Dark River, Claire Denis’ High Life, Iain Cunningham’s Irene’s Ghost (documentary with animation) and Jerry Rothwell’s documentaries How to Change the World and forthcoming The Reason I Jump.
From 2007 until 2011, Marilyn was Head of Development for the New Zealand Film Commission where the many films she developed included Taika Waititi’s Boy (Berlinale - Grand Prix Generation K-plus), Tusi Tamasese’s debut feature O Le Tulafale/The Orator (Venice Orrizonti, Special Mention), Toa Fraser’s Dean Spanley starring Peter O’Toole, Gaylene Preston’s Drama- Doc Home by Christmas (Cannes Cinephile, LFF, Sydney International Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival), Florian Habicht’s Love Story (LFF) and Annie Goldson’s documentary Brother Number One (Melbourne International Film Festival, NZIFF).
Before going to New Zealand, Marilyn was senior tutor at The Script Factory, with whom she devised and taught many courses for writers and developers. She has also run training and development programmes for, among others, Arista Development, EM Media and the Arvon Foundation in the UK, and for the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem, the British Council in Mumbai and the Norwegian Film Institute in Oslo. She has tutored at film labs in Brazil, Singapore and Toronto and has taught at the NFTS, London Metropolitan University and the Central Film School. She is currently a regular consultant on producers’ workshop ACE and the EKRAN+ director’s lab in Warsaw and has just been a mentor at the first ever Documentary Creative Retreat run by Doc Society.
Outside of her work at the BFI Marilyn is developing projects with her producing partner in both the UK and New Zealand, including the debut feature from writer/director Amy Neil and, with Film4, an adaptation by Rachel Joyce of her best-selling novel “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry”.
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