‘The Outrun’ Producer Sarah Brocklehurst on Her Long Journey Bringing Amy Liptrot’s Memoir to the Big Screen

variety.com:

Alex Ritman “The Outrun,” the adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s deeply raw and lyrical 2016 memoir about addiction, recovery and nature, premiered in Sundance this year to stellar reviews, with many awards prophets already suggesting that the film could take Saoirse Ronan — who stars in and produces the film — back to the Oscars in 2025.

For producer Sarah Brocklehurst, the Sundance premiere also marked something of an enjoyable full circle, landing almost five years to the day after the Sundance 2019 debut of “Animals.” The film, which screens at the Berlin Film Festival, also marks the first feature from her Brock Media banner. “Animals,” based on Emma Jane Unsworth’s novel about hedonism and friendship (described as a “Withnail for Girls”) and starring Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat, may not have been Brocklehurst’s debut film (that was 2012’s “Black Pond”), but she claims it was a career game-changer. “It proved to myself and probably to others that I was a producer who could get things made,” she says, adding that, without backing from any public funds in the U.K., she had to go out internationally to find co-production support. “Animals” — directed by Sophie Hyde (behind recent hit “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) — also launched as Brocklehurst was several years into developing “The Outrun,” having “fallen in love” with Liptrot’s writing and just knowing that there “was an epic, visceral film in there.” Upon reading the book, she had immediately written a “love letter” to the author, starting a long process of relationship-building.