Ben Pickering (born 23 June 1979) is a London-born filmmaker and novelist. He is best known for directing the crime thrillers Two Days in the Smoke and Welcome to Curiosity, producing the award-winning Election Night and Give Them Wings and for his dystopian alternative history novel Freiheit.
Childhood
Born in Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley to Welsh parents, Pickering returned to live in Wales’ second city Swansea when he was one. He grew up in the city, studying at the now defunct Dumbarton House School (whose alumni include Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Ffynone House School before studying Politics at Swansea University.
Early film career
Pickering's first foray into film-making came in 1995 when aged just 16 he produced and starred in his first feature film, the coming-of-age drama Backstreet. Two years later he produced and starred in the no-budget gangster thriller Tragic Irony. Shot on 16mm film with a minuscule £6,000 ($7,500) budget, it was described as a cross between Pulp Fiction and Shallow Grave, taking a swipe at a decadent Nineties Britain.
Politics and academia
After making his directorial debut in 1999 with the pilot episode for docudrama series How To Get Away With Murder, Pickering's film career took a back seat as he got heavily involved in UK politics.
While studying at Swansea University, he joined the Conservative Party. He rose quickly through its ranks to be selected in May 2000 as its candidate for the Labour-held Swansea West parliamentary constituency for the 2001 UK General Election.
A socially liberal, economically conservative politician, Pickering was a very different kind of Conservative candidate to those that had gone before. Afraid that he might win the seat, the Swansea Labour Party co-ordinated with the South Wales Evening Post to make allegations of financial impropriety against Pickering during televised First Minister's Questions in the National Assembly for Wales (or Senedd) on 14 June 2000. As then First Minister Rhodri Morgan made the unsubstantiated allegations in the Senedd, he was protected by parliamentary privilege and Pickering could not sue for libel. When Morgan refused to repeat the allegations outside of the Senedd, senior Conservatives (including Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, their former Welsh leader and a supporter of Pickering) forced him to stand aside while South Wales Police investigated the allegations. In September 2000, South Wales Police announced that Pickering had no case to answer and ended their investigation.
Despite being cleared of any wrongdoing, after the allegations were repackaged by the BBC Wales political programme Dragon's Eye in April 2001, Pickering's frontline political career never recovered.
He continued to work with centre-right think tanks while embarking on a PhD, before finally leaving the Conservative Party in 2006. He is no longer politically affiliated or active.
Return to film
In 2007 Pickering produced his first film in ten years, the quirky and surreal short film Beached. Made for £25,000 ($30,000) in conjunction with graduates of the London Film School, it featured Welsh rugby legend Ray Gravell in his final screen role. Beached was selected for the 2009 Strasbourg International Film Festival and also screened at the Short Film Corner in Cannes the same year.
In 2012, he directed his first feature film The Smoke (original title Two Days in the Smoke). The £500,000 ($650,000) budget film, which was a remake of his earlier film Tragic Irony (which he had produced and starred in), starred starring Matt Di Angelo, Lili Bordán, Stephen Marcus, B*Witched singer Lindsay Armaou, Anna Passey and Alan Ford.
The Smoke was released in the UK and Ireland in October 2014 and internationally in 2015 (as London Payback). One of the film's stars, Jeff Leach, told reporters that many scenes featuring his character Dean ended up on the cutting room floor. IMDB refers to the release as the "studio cut" not the Director's Cut of the film, which reportedly has 12 minutes of additional unseen footage. Footage not seen in the released version of the film involving Leach as well as Passey and Christian Brassington can be seen in an earlier trailer.