Exam

Brief close-up scenes introduce eight candidates prepping themselves for an Exam. It will land one of them a top corporate job. They troop into a windowless room with eight desks, an armed guard, and a black British "Invigilator" who details the rules governing their 80-minute test, and then leaves the room. The winner will be the one who answers the question on a test paper.

They immediately realise that the blank papers do not contain a question. After a complaining Cantonese-British woman breaks the ground rules and is ejected by the guard, the surviving seven candidates set out to find the question.

A self-assertive "White" man leaps into alpha dominance, bullying the other males (brown, black and deaf) and the females (blond, brunette and dark). One by one, they reveal their characters during the group efforts to discover if the question can be revealed by varying light sources or liquids. Twists and turns in their relationships and personalities lead to the inevitable stand-offs, threats, bloodshed, final countdown and incredible plot resolutions.

Inevitably, writer-producer-director Stuart Hazeldine's debut feature movie has been seen as a Brit movie version of US TV's The Apprentice. It's also akin to Das Experiment, Battle Royale and other movies that dramatised group dynamics and militaristic tendencies. Above all, though, from Hazeldine's own point of view, his low-budget exercise marks the completion of his movie-making apprenticeship.

A post-uni migrant to Hollywood, the Surrey-born Englishman earned a living by turning out original screenplays and re-writes from 1995 onwards, often in collaboration with Greek-Australian director Alex Proyas. Some were produced, including his rewrites for Proyas's Knowing (starring Nicolas Cage) and the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still (his second, uncredited, joint effort with director Scott Derrickson), starring Keanu Reeves. Having gained on-site experience, and the necessary production funds, he was ready to go back to the UK and make his first solo feature.

It earned him a BAFTA nomination for outstanding debut feature, in 2010, alongside stronger competition (David Jones's winning Moon and Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy), a drug saga and a documentary. It was a worthwhile homeward step for him to take: he's now back in Hollywood, doing his own things in much bigger ways.