At 4pm on Monday, Paul Greengrass finished shooting the fifth Jason Bourne film. To be released in July, it marks the return to the franchise of the Oscar-nominated director and his star, Matt Damon. Shot largely in the UK and crewed mostly by Brits, the film is expected to be one of the year’s best-performing at the global box office – alongside Star Wars spin-off Rogue One, which was also shot in London.

But on Monday evening, Greengrass, 60, cautioned that the British film and television industries need to take urgent action to foster talent in order to continue to compete on the world stage. The director cautioned that apparent advances in accessibility hastened by the digital revolution were being undermined by a “casualisation” of the industry which prices out poorer young people and stifles creativity.

Greengrass, who began his career after Cambridge University with a six-month contract at Granada TV, where there were “mentors down every corridor”, said: “You very quickly felt protected. That’s all gone. Young people starting out are being screwed to the ground. If you don’t have a rich mum or dad, that’s a problem.

“Our industry is not the plaything of the aristocracy, but there’s no question that being able to be sustained by your parents when starting salaries are luncheon money and contract length is tiny is invaluable. It’s being filled by people with means.

“We’ve got to work harder as an industry to make young people’s route in benign. It wasn’t that I didn’t have my arse kicked, but you were in a system where you had time to make mistakes and were given space not to conform.”

Greengrass was speaking to the Guardian ahead of the launch of Breakthrough Brits, an initiative spearheaded by the British Academy of Film and Television Artsto offer publicity, career advice and mentoring to young people in the film, TV and gaming sectors.

But he cautioned that the initiative “is only ever going to be one tiny part of what needs to be a very broad engagement with skills revival in this country. We have to think about where we’re going to be as an industry in five years’ time and how we’re going to create systematic opportunities for people to train.”

As part of his schools outreach work Greengrass said he’d been struck by how “those industries contiguous with us – sport and music – much more readily reflect the Britain outside. And that’s because it feels very remote to make a film unless you’re middle-class”.

That the British film and TV industries currently enjoy such good health, he said, should not mean that positive action is arrested. “You have to make dispensation in good times for the next generation.”

Greengrass, right, directing Matt Damon and Julia Stiles in The Bourne Supremacy in 2004. Photograph: Rex

Greengrass praised the work of former culture secretary Chris Smith and of the Labour government in their backing of the film and TV industries, “leading despite problems, weathering the lottery issue and getting the rebate right. They were superb.”



But the director – who shot Ed Miliband’s election campaign video – also applauded efforts by current culture minister Ed Vaizey and chancellor George Osborne. “Their commitment is just as strong. You can’t say they’ve not been really proactive and imaginative. They’re doing it because they know it’s a growing dynamic sector. There’s jobs there, and internationally we tear it up.”

He also urged the audience – made up of previous Breakthrough Brits, including the Imitation Game actor Alex Lawther and Ray Panthaki, star of Convenience – to wrest control by forming unions to preserve best practice. “There is a limit to what can be done top-down. Legislation is irrelevant. You can take power into your own hands – and you must.” The fostering of crafts and guilds should, he said, “be activities as central to you as the film-making. Otherwise we’re at the mercy of being atomised.”

In 2007, Greengrass – alongside the director Charles Sturridge – established Directors UK, a national body which aims to fulfil the same function that the high-profile Directors Guild of America does in the US.

“It’s very strong there because everyone takes time and pride in their guild. It’s highly volunteered and a vital part of industry and community.”

When establishing the organisation, Greengrass said he and his committee had wrestled with some of the same issues now facing Bafta and its US equivalent, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), in seeking to increase diversity but not disenfranchise industry veterans.

Following the backlash to the lack of diversity among this year’s Oscar nomintions, Ampas proposed measures to curb the voting privileges of retired members in order to fast-track younger and more diverse members. These met with a mixed reception, with some feeling unfairly marginalised; a diversity survey sent by Bafta to its members in January also provoked some concerns in the UK.

With Directors UK, said Greengrass, “you had to protect older members so they didn’t feel pushed out. But you also needed to ensure it wasn’t just a club for those people lucky enough to be in work.”

Greengrass also told the young hopefuls that the rewards for film-makers making movies engaged with live politics have never been higher. “It’s reflected in the hugest superhero movies to the most insightful arthouse. Everybody is trying to make sense of the world.



“One of the things we look to the next generation for is hope: where is the possibility of human life here? That’s going to be very, very important for British cinema to find.”

• Paul Greengrass is a supporter of BAFTA Breakthrough Brits, in partnership with Burberry. Applications for 2016 are now open here.