The Girl Who Cried Wolf film

Aim

Help us make a cinematic short film that puts rewilding at the heart of its story and brings the wild back into our collective imagination

This project is match funded by Creative Scotland meaning all contributions up to £250 per individual will be doubled.

Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, a wolf has been seen where no wolf should exist. The species has been extinct in the UK for three centuries. And yet Eilidh, a vet from Glasgow on a hen weekend, saw one. She knows what she saw. No one believes her.

The Girl Who Cried Wolf is a short film about what happens next.

Inspired by George Monbiot's landmark book Feral, this is a poignant, cinematic exploration of a woman who catches a glimpse of something wild and finds she cannot go back to the life she had before. It is a story about the thin line between belief and obsession, and about a longing most of us feel but rarely name: the hunger to reconnect with the natural world.

Written by Annie McBain & Dan Pringle and starring MTV award winning actress Sophia Di Martino (Disney’s Loki, Yesterday, Flowers), the film will be shot in the Scottish Highlands blending immersive filmmaking techniques with the awe of natural history programmes. The film will combine the kind of breathtaking, expansive cinematography usually reserved for wildlife documentaries with intimate, character-driven narrative storytelling. Think Terrence Malick meets a BBC natural history show. Confined, fluorescent-lit suburbia versus the vast, living wilderness of Scotland.

George Monbiot himself has read the script and given the project his blessing. He believes radical filmmaking in this form is needed more than ever.

We are living through a biodiversity crisis, and Scotland sits at its heart. The country ranks in the bottom 10% for nature intactness globally and only 2% of the ancient Caledonian forest remains. Many key species, including apex predators such as lynx and wolves, have been absent for centuries. And yet Scotland also leads the way in rewilding with the Scottish Rewilding Alliance working towards making Scotland the world's first rewilding nation.

Films like The Outrun, The Salt Path, and H is for Hawk have shown there is a hungry audience for stories that put our relationship with the natural world at their centre. The Girl Who Cried Wolf joins that conversation and for the first time, puts rewilding itself at the heart of the drama, not as backdrop or subplot.

The conversation about rewilding is happening now, in policy, in land management and in how we imagine our future. This film joins that conversation at exactly the right moment, when people are hungry for stories that reconnect us to the wild and remind us what we've lost, both within the landscape and within ourselves.

Dan Pringle (Co-Writer/Director) - Dan is an award-winning filmmaker known for his provocative storytelling and distinct cinematic style. His features include the cult thriller K-Shop (Sky Cinema/Amazon, 2017) and Die Before You Die (Amazon, 2024), both critically acclaimed with the latter picking up Best Director and the Jury Prize at Manchester Film Festival. His short Waste (2025), an exploration of eco-anxiety, competed at the Galway Film Fleadh. He is also known for his collaboration with Eva Green on the dystopian thriller A Patriot.

Annie McBain (Co-Writer/Director) – Annie is a successful lawyer making her screenwriting and directing debut alongside Dan. Her own experience of professional city life, and the creeping sense of disconnection from the natural world, is woven into Eilidh's story. An impassioned advocate for nature conservation, Annie believes cinema can bridge the gap between new audiences and urgent environmental realities.

Ayşe Jamieson (Producer) - Having trained under John Yorke at the NFTS, Ayşe is creative producer and writer with over 10 years working in film & TV with credits include BAFTA winning The Traitors UK & US, Gogglebox and Lucy Worsley’s Suffragettes. 2026 is set to be a busy year with forthcoming projects for Netflix, Disney+ and Derren Brown’s latest venture for Channel4. Deeply passionate about films that place Scotland at the heart of the story, Ayşe intends to fully realise the bold vision for the The Girl Who Cried Wolf and unlock its cinematic potential.

Wounded Buffalo (Co-Producers/Sound) - Wounded Buffalo are multi-award-winning sound designers and post-production specialists responsible for some of the most iconic natural history productions of the last three decades. Their credits include Blue Planet, Wild London, Frozen Planet and the BAFTA-nominated H is for Hawk, work that has earned them multiple BAFTAs and Emmys. With over 30 years of experience crafting immersive soundscapes that bring the wild to life, Wounded Buffalo have committed as co-producers, delivering the film's full audio post-production and bringing their unparalleled expertise in capturing nature's voice.

Chris Fergusson (Cinematographer) — Chris's credits include the BBC series Bad Education and Ten Pound Poms, as well as numerous features including Dan Pringle's cult thriller K-Shop. As a proud Scottish cinematographer with roots in Galloway, Chris brings a distinctive visual sensibility that balances naturalism with cinematic scale, essential for a film that demands both intimate character work and the breathtaking sweep of the Scottish Highlands.

Sophia Di Martino (Lead Role of Eilidh) - Sophia is an MTV award winning actress best known for her starring role in Marvel's Loki on Disney+. Her previous work includes Yesterday (Danny Boyle), Flowers (Channel 4), and Sweetheart. She brings extraordinary depth, intelligence, and emotional range to Eilidh's journey.

This project will have a life beyond the film itself. We are partnering with creative youth organisations across Scotland in the filmmaking process, creating genuine pathways into the industry.

What we're committing to:

Working with our partners, we will bring a cohort of young people into the post-production phase of the film, giving them hands-on experience in the offline editing process alongside our professional crew. Director Dan Pringle will also lead a series of workshops on sustainable film practice and environmental stewardship, exploring how filmmakers can work responsibly within natural landscapes and use their craft to tell stories that matter. These workshops and post-production placements are fully funded within this campaign budget and will happen regardless of any additional funding.

If, however, we achieve our stretch goal or secure additional grant funding:

We will expand the programme significantly, bringing eight young trainees from the Highlands onto the production itself during the shoot in Summer 2026, shadowing cast, and crew across all departments. This would be facilitated by Scottish outreach specialist Kate Heightman, in partnership with Scottish creative youth organisations.

A successful crowdfunding campaign strengthens our case for this expanded programme, demonstrating public support and industry confidence for funders.

Your support will fund the production of the film with principle photography planned to take place in Glasgow and the Highlands in June 2026. Here is how the budget breaks down:

This project is match funded by Creative Scotland meaning all donations up to £250 per individual will be doubled.Creative Scotland are at the beating heart of the Scotland's creative community and we are grateful for their generous support in bringing this project to life.

With Sophia Di Martino's profile and the film's unique fusion of narrative and uniqiue wildlife filmmaking, we're positioning this as a statement piece about Scotland's (and the wider UK's) rewilding future.

Once filming wraps in summer 2026, the film will enter post-production with Wounded Buffalo crafting the soundscape. We intend to complete the edit by autumn and begin both our festival tour and a community screening porgamme from late 2026 into 2027.

Targeting BAFTA and Oscar-qualifying festivals, we hope to launch at either the Glasgow Film Festival (March 27) or the Edinburgh International Film Festival (August 27).

Our community screening tour will partner with organisations in the Rewilding and conservation space to deliver events across Scotland, the UK and Europe, that encourage discussion around nature connectedness and tackling the biodiversity crisis.

The completed film will also serve as a proof of concept for a feature-length film, expanding on Eilidh's journey and exploring the origins of the wolf she encounters. Recent indie features exploring themes of nature reconnection have proven this genre's commercial and critical appeal. We believe there is more to unpack here, and this is how we begin.

We wish to thank all those who have directly inputted into the film's script or provided valuable resources or inspiration that have contributed to the project's development over the last three years.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made