Abner Pastoll - Biography

Abner Pastoll is a British film director and screenwriter based in London.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa on February 12, 1982, Abner's family used to run a two screen cinema, until 1999, in the (at the time) town of Rustenburg. He moved to London with his parents at the age of 2, and although relocating and growing up in the UK, he would still travel back to the family cinema for at least one month out of each year until it closed down.

His directing credits include the short films The Secret Wish (2007), La crim - 2e division (2008), A Great Mistake (2010) and Me or the Dog (2011) starring Edward Hogg and featuring the voice of Martin Clunes, which premiered out of competition at the 64th Festival de Cannes in the section Coup de Coeur and gained a theatrical cinema release in London, UK in March 2012.

In October 2009, Abner was selected as a directing talent for Think-Shoot-Distribute as part of the BFI London Film Festival, and in 2011 for a MEDIA supported feature script development programme that took place in 4 parts across the year in Spain, the UK, Bulgaria and Greece. On the programme, his project beat out several others for securing a grant to shoot a 3 minute teaser that would premiere at the 52nd Thessaloniki Film Festival during the final part of the workshop.

Abner runs production company February Films with producer Junyoung Jang (The Host (2006)), and has several feature films in development as writer-director. He is (as of July/Aug 2012) in pre-production for a suspense thriller set in France, produced by Junyoung Jang and Guillaume Benski.

He also oversees other productions in the February Films slate and heads up the creative development of projects with other directors. He serves as executive producer on the romantic drama A Long Way from Home (2013) from writer-director Virginia Gilbert and starring Natalie Dormer, James Fox, Paul Nichollsand Brenda Fricker.