Interviews with the team behind Pigeon Shrine FrightFest’s ‘Protein’

Every year at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest, organisers dedicate one of their Saturday screens to their First Blood programme. Films selected for the First Blood selection highlight some of the best and brightest new talent on the British genre scene. Whether they are feature films showing for the first time or creators of new genres, the strand has a long history of bringing in new talent early. Previous filmmakers selected for First Blood include Graham Hughes with Death of a vlogger, and Chris Cronin whose film The Moor took FrightFest 2023 by storm. This year’s slate of titles once again delivered an abundance of quality, with Tony Burke’s Egg white just one of the many highlights.

Based on his 2014 short film of the same name, award-winning film, content and music video director Tony Burke makes his feature film debut with Protein, a grim chilling tale of a traumatized ex-soldier and serial killer who returns to South Wales to escape his demons. There, Sion (Craig Russell, Canaries) becomes obsessed with workouts and the gym, and eats a local drug dealer for their protein. Forced to kill again, he sends shockwaves through the local criminal underworld and inadvertently ignites a brutal and bloodthirsty tit-for-tat war between rival gangs. Soon, the bloody events set Sion on an unlikely path to redemption.

After ten years in production and nearly coming to a standstill due to the pandemic, Egg white finally screened at FrightFest. The response to the screening was overwhelmingly positive and the audience loved the mix of Dead Man’s Shoes And Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Ahead of the world premiere, writer and director Tony Burke, lead actor Craig Russell and co-star Kezia Burrows spoke with THN about the project on the FrightFest media wall.

Egg white screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest. A release date for Egg white Still to be confirmed, but THN will update this as soon as we have more information.