Luna Carmoon On The Battle Of Producing Her Debut ‘Hoard’

British filmmaker Luna Carmoon first set plans to make her feature debut with Film Four after producing a series of buzzy short projects. That feature, however, was put on indefinite hold after execs at the broadcaster, as Carmoon describes it, “ghosted” her. 

“Thankfully I didn’t sign any contracts with them. But I was going to be in development with them,” she explains from a photography studio in London where she is currently working. “And then they disappeared for a year and I never heard from them again.”

In response, Carmoon began writing a new project out of “desperation and sanctity.” The result was Hoard, which debuted at last year’s Venice Film Festival. The film picked up three prizes in Venice before embarking on an extended festival run, which included LFF where Carmoon won the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature. Previous winners of the Sutherland include Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Robert Eggers, Julia Ducournau, and Mati Diop. Hoard is now one of 2024’s buzzier British awards titles. 

The film begins in the early 1980s with Maria, a young girl in South East London, and her mother, Cynthia, an obsessive hoarder. When Maria is taken into foster care, the film leaps forward in time. Maria, now a teenager, attempts to reconnect with her mother when she meets Michael, another troubled teen, and they develop an intense bond.

Starring is Joseph Quinn, best known for his role in Netflix’s Stranger Things, alongside Saura Lightfoot Leon, Hayley Squires, Lily-Beau Leach, Deba Hekmat, Samantha Spiro, and Cathy Tyson.

Below, Carmoon explains how she got Hoard from concept to production, how she protected her debut feature from being “diluted” by meddling execs, and why she will never trade in London for Hollywood filmmaking.

“I’m not interested in Americana. I feel like we have so many amazing new filmmakers, and their dream is to just make the bland Americana version of their worlds,” Carmoon says. “We’ve lost some greats to Americana.”

DEADLINE: Luna, How old are you?

LUNA CARMOON: I’m 27.

DEADLINE: When did you start getting into cinema? And when did you realize you wanted to be a filmmaker? 

CARMOON: I didn’t realize that cinema was all I did with my time until I was about 14. I used to plan my days to bunk off school to watch films that I had planned the night before. It was all I ever enjoyed. It was my escape. I realized I could be a filmmaker when I was perhaps 17, but there weren’t any schemes I could apply to that didn’t need a degree. I didn’t go to film school. I couldn’t afford it. I just went to work. I worked at CEX and kept checking the Creative England website in pure desperation, hoping there’d be a scheme that I could apply for. At the time, they’d made the film The Goob, which I really enjoyed. This was before they did Lady Macbeth. As soon as Lady Macbeth happened money started flooding in and they created this scheme that I could apply to. You didn’t have to have experience. That opened the door for me to make my first short. 

DEADLINE: Where did you grow up going to the cinema? Lewisham famously has no cinemas now right? Catford Mews just closed down. 

CARMOON: Yeah, we currently have no cinema in Lewisham. It’s depressing, and we recently lost the Bromley Picturehouse too, which was my other closest cinema. There’s no way to watch films anymore. As a kid, my mum took me to the cinema a lot. My memories of that are fuzzy. I do remember watching a lot of films with my grandparents because I spent most of my time there. We would watch all their VHS tapes. It was often whatever freaky film my nan had recorded on tape the night before and forced me to watch. They all probably scarred me for life but I was just in awe constantly of whatever the hell was being fed to me.

DEADLINE: I had a similar experience with my grandparents, who were from the East End and loved Hitchcock like most East Enders of that generation.  The first film I remember seeing was The Birds. It scarred me for many years. 

CARMOON: My nan made my mum watch that when she was really young too.  And it terrified her to death. My nan was also a crazy bird lady, so she would always have birds around. They used to petrify my mum. But yeah it just feels like cinema was more accessible at that time. People would just go to the cinema and smoke cigarettes and watch reruns on a loop. That’s how my nan and granddad got to know each other. She was an ice cream girl actually in a cinema where the venue EartH is now.

DEADLINE: So you made some shorts. How did you get from there to making a feature?

CARMOON: It was really weird. I was lucky that my shorts did quite well. That put me on the map. And then I was ghosted by Film Four with my first feature. 

DEADLINE: When you say ghosted you mean they stopped responding to you? 

CARMOON: Yeah, pretty much. It was COVID times. Thankfully I didn’t sign any contracts with them. But I was going to be in development with them for my first feature. And then they disappeared for a year and I never heard from them again. So I started writing Hoard out of desperation and sanctity. The story then just blossomed into something that was quite healing. We presented it to BBC Film and it was one of the first post-COVID productions. We were still wearing masks and getting tested every day.

DEADLINE: Hoard is unlike many other recent first-time British features. It doesn’t feel like it was smoothed down or curtailed by executives. How did you manage to keep their hands out of the creative process? 

CARMOON: It was a battle. I think your first feature shouldn’t be diluted. I tried to approach this like it could be my first and last film. So if it was going to be a sinking ship, it would be my sinking ship. It can be really hard, especially as a working-class filmmaker, going into these spaces and not feeling like you have to be appreciative all the time. I was very meek, to begin with. But then I started to tell myself that these people shouldn’t be telling me to dilute anything. For example, they want films to be ninety minutes, but that’s not storytelling. There shouldn’t be a format for a film other than what works for that story. It was down to my producers really having a backbone and real love for the story. And real faith in me. Hoard isn’t like a lot of the first-time British features we have now that are really diluted. Over the past 10 years, I haven’t enjoyed any of the first features because they come out in this weird format that’s almost like poverty porn. It’s really all just an insult and it’s not interesting or authentic.

DEADLINE: You’ve spoken eloquently about your distaste for how bourgeois the core of the British film industry is. Ironically, your film has been embraced by those same people. It was screened in places like Picturehouse that are squarely pitched to bourgeois film consumption. How do you contend with that? 

CARMOON: There are certain elements that I feel uncomfortable with. It’s sort of a machine that feeds itself. It’s funny, I used to work with a writer and we used to compare Cannes to that unreleased film Tom Six made about housewives who would masturbate to war crime videos [The Onania Club]. That’s really what Cannes is. Rich people masturbating over poverty porn. Of course, not all the time. But we know that is the fashion of a festival like that. Luckily, I’ve had such an amazing publicist on this film and she’s managed to poke the film in places where more people from our worlds will see it. The word-of-mouth effect has also helped a lot. I’m also such an advocate for piracy. I constantly tell people to just stream it on Putlocker because that’s how I got into film. Especially when we were teens it was like 17 quid for a new DVD. Illegal streaming has made things more accessible for people who perhaps can’t afford MUBI or the Curzon Soho. I’m so glad those places exist, but I didn’t even know the BFI existed until I was 17. I stumbled across it and I lived south of the river. 

DEADLINE: I grew up on Putlocker too. It really democratized film education. 

CARMOON: Democratized who believes they can make stuff as well. I traveled the world with Putlocker. And I’m so glad it existed.

DEADLINE: What are you interested in doing next? And what aren’t you interested in? I imagine everyone is blowing up your phone now.

CARMOON: No, not really. I think people know I’m not interested in directing other people’s work. I’m quite a lazy person, so I have to spend time and love something from the ground up. I just don’t have the energy to direct other people’s stuff. So I’m probably not a director for hire. There’s one book that I’d love to adapt, which I never say the name of. It’s American. But I’m not interested in going to America and making American films unless there’s something that truly speaks to me. I’m not interested in Americana. I feel like we have so many amazing new filmmakers, and their dream is to just make the bland Americana version of their worlds. We’ve lost some greats to Americana. For example, Ana Lily Amirpour or Julia Ducournau. Titane is so Americanized and I’m sure she’s making something in America next. 

What often makes people’s work interesting is seeing these stories told in landscapes and lenses we’ve never seen them told before. That’s what made Raw so vibrant. Titane just felt quite Americanized. You could have probably just put that in Kansas City and it would have worked just as identical. I’m not interested in that. I love London. I’m not a patriot, but I love where I’m from and the people that I’ve grown up with. That’s what inspires me. So I can’t imagine adapting my work to be Americanized anytime soon. I just want to do my Downham trilogy. That’s what I’m working towards. And then I might run away and become a carpenter or sell out. 

DEADLINE: Sell out after the trilogy. Do a Marvel film and then become a carpenter with all your millions.

CARMOON: Exactly. I’m also interested in immortalizing London. It’s changing so much. I want to immortalize these places and people before it all gets rebuilt and we don’t recognize anything anymore.