After a night on the town, a terrified slacker awakes to find himself slap bang in the aftermath of a gang shootout — by retracing his thoughts and surveying his surrounding, he may discover there’s more than meets the eye…

Director’s Vision

‘Tequila Sunrise’ served as my graduation project whilst studying at Film School in London.

Instead of wishing to deconstruct the political injustice in the United Kingdom or the deep-rooted angst that young people face in modern society – like most film students tend to explore in their early filmography – I opted to create a quirky little tale that plays homage to certain cinematic tropes I’ve always admired – guns, gangsters, retro cars and gore.

It sounds puerile, I know; but this was only a portion of the idea – the setting if you will. The other portion was the narrative that would go along with this setting; and that was to establish a payoff or twist or justification or whatever it is you want to call it – essentially develop a quirk that would reveal a polar opposite emotion to the suspense that the audience had been feeling for the bulk of the story up to that point.

This was hugely inspired by my love of irreverent, self-deprecating humour that Britain has been synonymous for since the early Python days in the late 60s. Our protagonist, whom we sympathise with, very quickly becomes the butt of the joke and that was very much the journey I wanted the audience to be on board with.

Hopefully it made people laugh, and that’s what it’s all about!