Thanks to the sale of a mandolin, a 10-minute British film that cost just 400 pounds (755 dollars) to make is in the running for a top Palme d'Or award at this year's Cannes film festival.
The Man Who Met Himself, directed by Ben Crowe, 27, and starring his brother Daniel, 29, is the only British entry in the shorts category at Cannes, which opens Wednesday.
Crowe, a one-time railway ticketing agent from Newcastle, northeast England, said he was winding up a short-term job with the civil service when he learned Friday that his baby had made the Cannes shortlist of nine.
"When I got the call I was at work and thought it was my producer playing a trick on me," said Crowe. "This is amazing recognition for any film-maker, but for a small independent team it is a dream come true."
His partner Preeti Taneja, 28, a Londoner who co-wrote the film, pointed out that nobody involved in the project had ever been to film school.
"We just decided to make it when Ben sold his mandolin to raise money to buy his camera," she said.
{{/usCountry}}"We just decided to make it when Ben sold his mandolin to raise money to buy his camera," she said.
{{/usCountry}}"We put the film together during weekends. It's about the doopleganger myth, what happens when a person comes across their own doopleganger.
Crowe's first movie was a three-minute documentary, What Would Jesus Do?, which got airtime on Channel Four television.
Competing in Cannes, however, has raised a new financing issue: how to pay for everybody to go to the festival on the French Riviera to savour the moment.