About the Film

Since 2021 director Jonathan Zaurin has been working day and night on a multitude of projects, one of them being the film you are being presented with today: Derelict.

Derelict is an incredibly personal film. It is loosely inspired by a true crime story that affected the director closely as he went to school with one of the now convicted murderers. Moreover, it transpired some years later that Zaurin’s own father was having an affair with this young man’s older brother. Zaurin says “ it is a story that affected me in many ways and that I have carried within me for close to two decades before I truly figured out what to do with it. I couldn’t help but feel it could have been my own father, murdered in cold blood, he had spent so much time in the proximity of these people that it just could have been him. At the same time, having grown up with one of these two people, I had known that there wasn’t something that was fundamentally evil about him, despite the nature of his crimes, I had come to believe it was a set of circumstances and that nobody is inherently evil. After seeing a documentary focusing on the family of the victims, I had the idea of creating a story which woiuld focus on empathy, but not without the seething, rightfully earned anger of being robbed of your loved ones.”

Derelict has been the fruit of a very complex process. The first few drafts of the script were written by Jonathan and his wife and producer Sarah Zaurin, before being passed to crime novel writer Michael Mackenzie (to work on the plot and oil it up to maximum impact) and film writer and historian Kat Ellinger (for linguo and dialogue and this feeling of reality we were after), both did an absolutely tremendous job in sculpting a story that is both clear and simple whilst exposing some very complex, nuanced characters.

The film you have before you is two years of work (without considering the gestation of the idea itself). It is also a work of passion made on the absolutely tiny budget of £35 000. A very small amount of money then for a film that is incredibly ambitious. Every penny of that went towards paying the cast and the very small crew. We assembled a crew of dedicated, passionate people, people like Andy Piper, Ryan Jordan and Craig Simner who dedicated their time to ensuring this huge enterprise ran smoothly with very little. The casting process was long and delicate and we found what we think is a cast of incredibly promising actors, who again dedicated every minute of their time and all of their strength to giving their absolute best performances. “We wanted everything in this film to transcend its humble origins, but humble origins are also the subject of this film and we also wanted its origins to be reflected in the film’s visual identity. We did absolutely everything in our power to ensure that Derelict looked, sounded and felt great, that every actor was top notch and cast and directed carefully and importantly, we wanted to ensure we tapped into something that felt true. It’s not an easy watch, nor is it an easy film to categorise.. but we hope you find it an exhilarating watch.” Zaurin says.

So far, although the film has not been shown publicly yet, the first reactions from respected industry professionals have called it “Great!” commenting that “Jonathan has made something truly special in DERELICT – it’s not an easy one to categorize but it has the same unique DNA that made so many great films stand out” and that it was “A film that would make Shane Meadows proud!”. Writer and film critic Guy Adams called it “Rashomon for the Sports Direct Generation!”.

Legendary director Wayne Kramer (The Cooler, Running Scared) said that “DERELICT is the slow-burn anatomy of a brutal murder and its aftermath, one that puts the viewer on a collision course with both the victims and the perpetrators in the gut-wrenching crime drama from talented up-and-coming director Jonathan Zaurin. Following in the tradition of Mike Hodges, Shane Meadows and Ben Wheatley, Zaurin demonstrates a skill for digging just below the surface of England’s societal ills, exposing equal parts pain and redemption, all served up with a powerful cinematic vision.”

So without delaying any further, we hope you enjoy this film, which contains the heart and soul of every single person who worked on it.