Welcome to the official website of award-winning author and filmmaker Ben Pickering.

Born in London to Welsh parents, Ben’s film career spans three decades. Starting with his first feature-film Backstreet in 1995 – when he was just sixteen and studying for his GCSEs – he has since produced over a dozen features ranging from micro-budget to multi-million pound projects.

Seventeen years later, he finally took the plunge and directed his first feature Two Days in the Smoke, starring Matt di Angelo (Borgia), Lili Bordán (Battlestar Galactica) and Alan Ford (Snatch). The London- and Paris-set feature was released in the UK in October 2014 and internationally throughout 2015 as London Payback. It has recently been available on Netflix.

He returned to the director’s chair for the Cornwall-set psychological thriller Welcome to Curiosity, the world’s first wholly equity crowd-funded feature-film (which he also produced). It starred Amrita Acharia (Game of Thrones), Jack Ashton (Call the Midwife), Richard Blackwood (Eastenders) and Stephen Marcus (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). After a limited North American theatrical run, it was released worldwide in 2018.

Since then Ben has produced, co-produced or line produced features including the award-winning political thriller Election Night and the multi-award-winning Give Them Wings, the 1980s-set true story of a disabled man growing up in northern England. Both were released internationally in 2022.

He also published his award-winning debut novel Freiheit, a dystopian alternative history exploring what Britain would have looked like today if the Nazis had won the Battle of Britain.

Alongside line producing features for international clients including the Hallmark Channel, he is currently developing a slate of features and TV projects. His projects Local Boys and The Copper Kings were finalists and semi-finalists respectively in the 2020 Filmarkethub UK Online Pitchbox, while in 2021 he was a double-finalist with Hostage and Let It Go and semi-finalist with The Tank.

Ben specialises in sub-£5 million features, with extensive knowledge of UK Creative Tax Reliefs, SEIS/EIS tax incentive schemes and international co-productions.