Wondrous Oblivion

The scene is London, 1960. Eleven-year-old David Wiseman is a good Jewish boy with one big problem: he’s in love with the game of cricket, but he’s a terrible athlete. In fact, he has been reduced to keeping score for his prep school team, who find him "wondrously oblivious" to his own ineptitude. But David’s life, and that of his attractive refugee mother and stubborn Polish father, is about to change radically when, to the dismay of their narrow-minded neighbors, a black Jamaican family moves in next door. David’s budding friendship with Dennis, his new-found cricket mentor (the marvelous Bay Area-based actor Delroy Lindo) and Judy, Dennis’s daughter, will test the bounds of tolerance and loyalty for this gentlest of boys. His eyes open to what keeps people apart in matters of race, culture, and religion and the courage it sometimes takes to overcome differences. Wondrous Oblivion is the luminous and uplifting comic drama from British director Paul Morrison, whose 1998 Solomon and Gaenor received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Morrison takes a charming coming-of-age story and, like its kindred spirit Billy Elliot, creates a deeply felt, masterfully acted drama that is as engaging for younger viewers as it is for adults. Brimming with the sounds of calypso, reggae, and ska that brightened London’s drab streets in the 1960s, the film captures the longings of a Jewish working-class family as they seek to move up in the world without leaving their values behind. And if you thought Bend It Like Beckham was the best thing to happen to soccer (er, football) since Pelé, you’ll love what Wondrous Oblivion does for cricket -- it might even help you understand the rules.

Paul Morrison has a distinguished track record as a drama and documentary maker. His first feature film, SOLOMON AND GAENOR, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2000 and won the Welsh BAFTA for Best Film in 2001. The film was produced by APT Films with September Films, developed with Film Four and S4C and starred Ioan Gruffudd. It also won the Best Film Award at the Verona Film Festival, 2nd prize at Emden, Germany, Best Film at the Celtic Film Festival and a Golden Dolphin at Troia, Portugal, for Best Film. Paul's other credits include: THE NIGHT SHOW, three half hour dramas for Channel 4 entitled DEGAS AND PISSARRO FALL OUT with Alison Steadman and Michael Pennington, LUCREZIA BORGIA REVEALS ALL with Lynsey Baxter and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SCREAM with Gerard Logan. Paul directed A SENSE OF BELONGING, a four part documentary series about the dilemmas of British Jewish identity for Channel Four; FROM BITTER EARTH, a feature-length documentary for BBC2 about drawings and paintings created in the concentration camps and ghettos of World War II and UNSTABLE ELEMENTS, a feature-length satirical drama-documentary by Stephen Lowe for cinema and Channel 4 about the nuclear industry. Paul's BBC1 film JOHN AND YOKO was commemorated in the trade magazine Broadcast as 'one of the great moments of fifty years of television.' He is adapting and plans to direct Linda Grant's Orange Prize winning novel WHEN I LIVED IN MODERN TIMES as an APT production with Kevin Loader and Jonny Persey producing. Paul is also attached to Jon Fink's feature IF HE LIVED, which is also in development with APT Films.