Talent Talk: Urchin

Join us to celebrate the directorial debut of actor Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness, Babygirl, Scrapper), whose first feature film, Urchin, premieres in ‘Un Certain Regard’. Harris will be joined on the panel by director of photography Josée Deshaies (The Beast, Big Giant Wave, Babysitter) and producer Archie Pearch. Urchin is backed by BBC FILM and the BFI.

Speakers:

HARRIS DICKINSON | Writer-director
URCHIN

ARCHIE PEARCH | Producer
URCHIN, Devisio Pictures

JOSÉE DESHAIES | Director of Photography
URCHIN

Moderator:

WENDY MITCHELL | Journalist and Film festival Consultant

About the speakers:

HARRIS DICKINSON | Writer-director
URCHIN
BAFTA-nominated British actor Harris Dickinson burst onto the scene in Eliza Hittman’s 2017 Sundance hit BEACH RATS. He was nominated for ‘Best Male Lead’ at the Independent Spirit Awards, and ‘Breakthrough Actor’ at The Gotham Awards for his first screen role as ‘Frankie’. Since then, Harris has gone from strength to strength and continued to build an impressive and varied career.

This year, Harris’s directorial debut feature, URCHIN, will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Un Certain Regard. Also written by Harris, the story follows Mike, played by Frank Dillane, a rough sleeper in London trapped in a cycle of self-destruction as he attempts to turn his life around. URCHIN is produced by Harris’s Production company Devisio Pictures and produced by Archie Pearch.

In 2024, Harris starred in Halina Reijn’s A24 film BABYGIRL opposite Nicole Kidman, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film follows ‘Romy’ (Kidman), a high-powered CEO, as she puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with ‘Samuel’ (Dickinson), her much younger intern.

In 2023, Harris starred in Sean Durkin’s THE IRON CLAW for A24 opposite Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White and in the FX limited series A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD from The OA creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmangliij, alongside Emma Corrin and Clive Owen, for which he was BAFTA nominated.  He also starred in the British independent feature film SCRAPPER, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. In 2022, Harris led Ruben Östlund's Palme d’Or winning, Academy Award and BAFTA-nominated satirical comedy film TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, alongside Woody Harrelson and Charlbi Dean. Other film credits include BLITZ, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones, SEE HOW THEY RUN starring alongside Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan, Matthew Vaughn’s THE KING’S MAN, Joanna Hogg’s THE SOUVENIR: PART II, among others.

ARCHIE PEARCH | Producer
URCHIN, Devisio Pictures
Born and raised in London, Archie Pearch is a British producer who has trained under some of the industry’s most established producers across multiple BAFTA and Academy Award winning projects. Archie began his career at Working Title before moving over to Heyday Films in 2018 to work as David Heyman’s assistant. During his time at Heyday, he worked across Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and White Noise, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and most recently on Warner Bros. Willy Wonka starring Timothee Chalamet, and Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. His formative years working alongside a range of established and independent filmmakers has informed his taste and approach to filmmaking, which is as commercial as it is arthouse and eclectic. In 2023, Archie co-founded Devisio Pictures with Harris Dickinson after his first feature Urchin was commissioned by BBC Film. The film, backed by BBC, BFI and Tricky Knot was written and directed by Harris Dickinson and is due to release in 2025.

JOSÉE DESHAIES | Director of Photography
URCHIN
After studying Art History at the University of Siena in Italy, Canadian-born director of photography Josée Deshaies returned to Montreal, where she began her career as a camera assistant. Her break into cinematography came when director Bertrand Bonello offered her the role of DP on his first feature- marking the beginning of a long collaboration. Since then, Deshaies has worked on over 40 feature films, both fiction and documentary. Her work has earned her nominations for France’s César Awards and the Prix Lumières, as well as the Canadian Screen Awards and Quebec Cinema Awards. Fifteen of her films have been selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Most recently, her latest project Urchin, directed by Harris Dickinson, was featured in the Un Certain Regard official selection.