Writer director Derek Boyes graduated in 2004 from the National Film and Television School with the spellbinding fantasy short, The Happiness Thief. The film premiered in competition at Cannes that same year and went on to play at film festivals across the globe.

He has since directed a variety of shorts for Screen South, the BBC and the Bfi while developing a slate of imaginative feature films. His first feature-length screenplay Blackout, a gritty micro-budget thriller, was optioned by Ipso Facto Films in 2009 after it beat over two hundred feature projects to the final of The Big Pitch scheme.

In 2011 Derek stepped back from the film industry to bring up his daughter, but continued to expand his developing feature slate. In 2017 he was selected for the Raising Films' CLOSR programme - a networking and career development platform for filmmakers who are also parents or carers. Through this initiative he was able to reconnect with industry peers and form the Guerrilla Filmmakers Lab as an innovative way to re-launch his directing career and keep producing regular work.