PINNY GRYLLS, Co-Director

In 2024, Pinny Grylls won the BFI Chanel Filmmaker Award for her debut feature Grand Theft Hamlet, co-directed with her partner Sam Crane. The documentary film, shot entirely inside Grand Theft Auto, won the SXSW Jury Award for Best Feature Doc, two BIFA Awards, and is longlisted for a BAFTA. It will be distributed in cinemas in the UK by Tull Stories the US and MUBI. The BFI is supporting her second feature, Hear My Voice, about a boy aspiring to be an opera singer and his relationship with his deaf father. Pinny’s debut short documentary, Peter and Ben, premiered at IDFA and won awards at Aspen, LSFF, and SXSW. She has also made short docs for Channel 4, the BBC, The Guardian, The National Theatre, and The Royal Opera House. Pinny, who is deaf/hard of hearing lives in Hackney, East London.

SAM CRANE, Co-Director

Sam is an award-winning filmmaker, video artist and actor. His short machinima film WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON won Critics Choice at The Milan Machinima Festival, Best Video Art at Athens Digital Arts Festival, was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize and longlisted for The Aesthetica Art Prize. His production of HAMLET IN GTA won The Stage Award for Innovation. As an actor he has been critically acclaimed for his performances at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, in the West End and on Broadway and has collaborated with many of the most celebrated and influential theatre artists in the world, including Sir Mark Rylance, Katie Mitchell and Robert Icke. He is also a prolific screen actor and has appeared in many the most loved and successful films and television shows of recent years including Napoleon (Apple), The Crown (Netflix), Transatlantic (Netflix), Van Der Valk (PBS), The Trial of Christine Keeler (BBC), COBRA (Sky), Poldark (BBC), Endeavour (ITV) and Call The Midwife (BBC). He has recently completed filming The Deal, a six part drama series for Arte/Les Films Pelleas about the Iran Nuclear Deal. He is a PhD candidate at the University of York’s School of Arts and Creative Technologies doing auto-ethnographic research into performance practice in real and digital spaces.

Watch the Grand Theft Hamlet trailer here.