Synopsis

Festival winning Best Short Film Award 2005, ‘ The Full 10 Yards’, a debut short film written and directed by Dundonian Shehzad Afzal, shot in 6 hours and edited in 9, is a contemporary semantically reflective monologue. It introduces to the world, Jimmy Doyle, a retired 60-something set-in-his-ways street philosopher and football evangelist. Amidst the blood and guts of Sunday league football, you are held hostage to his opinions and doctrines. Something sinister is brewing and Jimmy Doyle is doing all the stirring. ‘The Full 10 Yards’, is an uncompromising modern reflective insight into a mindset that is cold in the heart and bleak in the mind. The monologue pulls no punches, and there is a certain poetic balletic dance in their semantic resonance, in today’s polarised society.

Director Statement

The script for the film was written over a couple of days, the same week it had to be shot. The pressurised time scales proved to be a major factor for the way the development of the antagonist character, the anii-hero, Jimmy Doyle was penned. I wanted the script to remain focused on the message I was trying to convey, and Jimmy's character had to be real. His words had to resonate with an audience in a believable manner, so I decided to design the film as a monologue piece, with jimmy Doyle as the central and the only character that actually had lines to speak. Due to the short timescales to shoot the film, six hours to be exact, I thought the best way to get the film in the can was to concentrate on the delivery of the message. So I decided to solely focus on actor performance, making the character of Jimmy Doyle leap from the pages of the script and onto the screen. Thankfully, the actor, Colin Brown, was up to the challenge of playing one of the vilest characters ever to grace the screen. The Full 10 Yards, is an important film for me, highlighting contemporary issues without holding back. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to make it and proved to be an enjoyable first foray in digital film making.

Broadcast Formats

THE FULL 10 YARDS is available now to be broadcast at Film Festivals, Cinemas and TV on the following formats: DVD, MiniDV and BetaSP.

Awards/Nominations

The film has been praised by critics for the distinctive dialogue and minimalist visual style. It went on to be screened at film festivals, where it won Best Short Film Award. It then went on to be screened at major art house cinemas throughout the UK from 2004 to 2007. It also has been broadcast on numerous occasions on Digital TV channels such as Community Channel and PropellerTV on SKY.

Quotes

"In a sense, Shehzad Afzal’s pointed take on racism and Sunday-league football isn’t very funny. Except, it is very funny – and worryingly enough, familiar. Afzal created the character of the bigoted Jimmy Doyle over only a few days, working to tight deadlines and no budget, constraints that have served to enliven this small gem", Mitch Miller, The Drouth Magazine.

Sales

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