Ruth Platt - Writer/Director

Ruth Platt read English Literature at University College Oxford after a comprehensive school education. She then went on to win a scholarship at RADA, leaving in her second year to set up a theatre company. She adapted Richard III and Hauptmann's Lonely Lives for stage as well as performing in both. Both won Time Out Critics' Choice extended runs. As an actress her work includes playing Lady Sarah Carlyle in Murder Rooms for the BBC, Janina in Roman Polanski's The Pianist, Lady Sarah in Hallmark's The Prince and the Pauper, Rosetta in Leonce and Lena at The Gate, Elizabeth in Richard III at The Pleasance. Her second short film, The Heart Fails Without Warning, which she adapted from the twice Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel's short story of the same name, was officially selected for Aesthetica Short Film Festival [2014], Palm Springs International Festival [2014] London Short Film Festival [2013] Raindance [2014] and Underwire [2013] It also had a special screening in 2014 at the BFI, Southbank, in partnership with Bird's Eye View Film Festival, followed by a Q&A with Ruth and Hilary Mantel. The Lesson was her first , micro budget, feature. It premiered in London at Film 4 FrightFest, in the USA at Slamdance, Park City, where it was nominated for Best Narrative Fiction, and also screened at Glasgow International Film Festival and Fantasporto, It secured distribution with Icon. The Black Forest, was her second micro budget feature, a dark comedy, which premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for The Michael Powell Award for Best British Film. Her first BFI supported feature film, a ghost story called Martyrs Lane, has just completed post production.