In Bruges and A Very British Scandal producers receive honorary degrees

“Don’t let anything stand in your way. Try things that might be beyond your reach. Be kind, but be ambitious. Pursue what you love and what makes you happy. You might well succeed.”

This was the advice Pete Czernin offered the graduating class of 2022 at their awards ceremony on Wednesday, where he, and his good friend Graham Broadbent, also picked up their own honorary doctor of letters degrees.

The two friends are also the producers behind critically-acclaimed films such as In Bruges, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and the TV show, A Very British Scandal returned to the university to collect their degrees.

Peter and Graham met on their first day of their history undergraduates in 1987, before setting off on the path into film industry.

“It was easy,” Graham joked. “I didn’t have any other friends and Pete looked like he knew as little as me.”

Pete added: “I had no idea we’d be doing this now, but I knew we’d still be friends. We lived together on the Royal Crescent with another friend and had such a good time.”

Graham and Pete have remained firm friends, producing sixteen films and TV shows together since graduating from Bristol – Photo: Blueprint Pictures

Whilst Pete moved to Hollywood after graduating and began working on scriptwriting, Graham stayed in the UK, working as a runner and producer’s assistant.

Despite this, throughout the nineties the pair saw each other as often as possible, particularly on Graham’s semi-regular “homages” to Hollywood, where he would stay on Pete’s sofa. Graham is godfather to Pete’s daughter.

Pete then returned to the UK and in 2005, the pair set up Blueprint Pictures where, two years later, with a modest budget, they produced their first film together.

Sixteen films and series later, the pair have come a long way since their humble beginnings.

Their latest film, A Boy Called Christmas, is a far cry from their days of small budgets and sleeping on sofas, costing $60 million to make and requiring the construction of a small village from the ground up in Prague.

The imitable pair are bound by a love of storytelling, journeying through genres, styles and several different countries to make their movies.

“I think we’re both motivated and interested in what we’re doing. Because we are friends we can be totally honest and tell the other person something’s rubbish,” said Pete.

“I feel lucky because every day is a new: it’s a new project, new people, new talent; it explores new things,” added Graham.

The pair were introduced on stage by Rayna Denison, professor of film and digital arts, who said “Peter Czernin and Graham Broadbent have changed the nature and scope of independent film in the UK and beyond.

“It is their ability to create films that entertain, while challenging us to understand the world anew, that make Pete and Graham’s contributions to cinema so important, and so popular with audiences the world over.”

The pair’s connection to Bristol remains strong and they haven’t ruled out a film set in the city.

“I met Pete,” Graham says simply, when asked what he remembers from his time as a student. “If that hadn’t happened I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

“We still haven’t done a story set in the 1980s about three guys living in a flat in Royal Crescent,” Pete said. “Do you think people will be interested in that?”

Main photo: University of Bristol

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