As the London Film Festival celebrates it’s 62nd year, a sleeper hit featuring a cast of unknowns filmed on a shoestring budget is set to steel the thunder from Hollywood by becoming the highest rated British film of all time in the IMDB chart rankings.

Lad : A Yorkshire Story tells the story of a teenage boy who befriends a park ranger after the death of his father. Filmed on location in the Yorkshire Dales, Lad has been widely lauded as the new Kes despite a filming budget of only sixty thousand pounds and a crew small enough to fit inside a minibus.

Dan Hartley director states ‘When we tried to secure distribution for Lad we were turned down by every distributor in town, so we toured the film extensively round the country and built our audience through word of mouth’. Six years later having become a father of two, Hartley’s persistence paid off when a YouTube copy of the film went viral securing 200,000 views in a matter of weeks and sending the IMDB rating of the film soaring.

With more films being made than ever before and marketing budgets edging out all but the slickest Hollywood productions, LAD represents a possible turning point in self-distribution.

Writer/Director Hartley states ‘What is remarkable is that Lad is now rubbing shoulders with films that have been made for hundreds of millions of dollars with marketing budgets to match, yet audiences are choosing to watch a small indie film from the UK featuring first-time actors.’

The team have now taken the unusual step of giving the film away for free and asking only that viewers continue to contribute to their rating on IMDB.

As Hartley states ‘IMDB has a massive impact on the types of films that Hollywood produces and distributes and ratings send a clear signal that audiences want more than just superhero films and franchises.’

'Everything about Lad has been geared towards its community spirit and we’re hoping that we can develop that on the world stage and bring awareness to a film that has always strived to punch far above its weight.’

Hartley now has his eyes set once more on the Yorkshire Dales with a film depicting a real-life caving disaster that struck the region in 1967.

Lad is available to watch for FREE on https://www.ladayorkshirestory.com