After graduating with a degree in history from Warwick University, he found work on Mike Figgis' Stormy Monday, before establishing his own production company in 1989 covering a wide variety of subjects, from sport to corporate videos.
[2] He first came to public attention as a director when Leon the Pig Farmer won him the FIPRESCI International Critics' Prize at the 1992 Venice Film Festival, the Best Newcomer award from the London Critics' Circle, the Most Promising Newcomer at the Evening Standard British Film Awards, and the Chaplin Award for the best first feature from the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
[1][3] His Hollywood debut was Jiminy Glick in Lalawood starring Martin Short as his celebrity interviewing alter-ego, produced by Gold Circle films.
In 2010 he directed In the Land of the Free... a feature documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson.
It tells the story of three men known as the Angola Three who among them have spent over a century in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State penitentiary.