About an all-vegan future

Simon Amstell has directed his first film, Chortle can reveal.

A satire set in a future where everyone is vegan, Carnage will air on the BBC iPlayer in the spring.

Casting is yet to be announced but Chortle understands that Amstell's Grandma's House co-star Samantha Spiro has a role.

Amstell is a committed vegan who has joked about the regressive strangeness of consuming animal products, and this film is his first full-length feature as a director. Earlier this year he shot a music video for Shock Machine, aka former Klaxons frontman James Righton

Amstell, who made his acting debut in Flowers creator Will Sharpe's 2011 film Black Pond alongside Chris Langham, has said he has been 'quietly learning' to direct for several years by observing filmmakers like Stephen Frears on the set of Florence Foster Jenkins, and that he prefers directing to performing.

'That is a very vulnerable place, especially with the kind of stuff I end up writing – it’s all really revealing,’ he told the i newspaper in May. 'I really like being behind the camera, helping someone else feel comfortable with revealing themselves.'

He added: 'It’s difficult to find something that has the same level of excitement and danger as doing live stand-up. Directing films is so all-encompassing, you’re so in the moment.

'And just as you have to manage an audience’s emotions and expectations when you’re on the stage, you have to do the same with a crew and a cast. It’s very exciting. That thrill feels like it might be enough for me. Sometimes.'

Earlier this year, he appeared in the artist Charlotte Colbert's short film The Silent Man, alongside Ben Miller, Cillian Murphy and Philomena's Sophie Kennedy Clark, which was screened at several film festivals.

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 18 Nov 2016