Biography

Former pop drummer Franny Armstrong arguably invented crowd-funding when she raised £900,000 from 300+ investors for her 2009 climate blockbuster The Age of Stupid five years before the launch of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. The Grierson-winning drama-documentary starred Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055. Released theatrically in 20+ countries, The Age of Stupid won a Guinness World Record for its "green carpet" premiere, reached No 1 at the UK box office (by screen average) and was broadcast on TV in 30+ countries (inc. BBC, Discovery, CBC, Arte, SBS). In 2019 it was re-released for its 10th anniversary: re-broadcast on BBC and released in 20+ languages across Amazon Prime, Google Play & Vimeo.

Franny founded the 10:10 campaign in 2009, in collaboration with The Guardian, which aimed to cut carbon emissions by 10% in a year. Participants included Spurs FC, London Zoo, 75,000 people, 1,500 schools, half of all local councils, the entire UK Government and - after the campaign spread to 41 countries - the cities of Paris, Oslo and Mexico City. The campaign continues to this day, under the new name Possible.

Franny's also known for her 2005 feature doc McLibel (BBC2/theatrical), about the infamous McDonald's court case, which was the only UK film in the BFI's series "Ten Documentaries Which Changed the World". Recently, Franny has twice collaborated on climate comedies with fake news reporter Jonathan Pie (aka comedian Tom Walker): "Pie Net Zero" (2020), which trended at #9 on YouTube and hit a million views in its first week and then again at COP26 last month for "The World's End", which The Guardian described as "proper funny and deadly serious all at the same time". Her "live documentary" Rivercide (2021), presented by George Monbiot, took the then-unknown issue of river pollution and turned it into a national scandal.

Franny has written chapters for three books, won Sheffield Doc/Fest's "Inspiration Award", been named as one of the "World's Top 100 Women" by the Guardian and one of "London's 1,000 most influential people" by The Standard. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University in October 2016 for her "exceptionally innovative and socially responsible methods to make social justice films more accessible to the general public", in 2021 was placed at #13 in Woman's Hour's "Power List" of the 30 leading female British environmentalists and in 2023 founded the community-woodlands-buying organisation Woodland Savers.
- IMDb mini biography by: Franny Armstrong

Daughter of Peter Armstrong.

I was born in the early 70s as part of the MTV generation who were told by a million adverts that the point of our existence was to shop more. Daunting though the task ahead may be, I feel enormously inspired and quite relieved that it turns out that we have something important to do. The people who came before us didn't know about climate change and the ones who come after will be powerless to stop it. So it's down to us. Other generations came together to overturn slavery or end apartheid or win the vote for women. There is nothing intrinsically more useless about our generation and there is no doubt about what we have to do. The only question which remains is whether or not we give it a go.

There are very few stories compelling enough to dedicate five years of my life to, but the deeper I get into the world of Undercovers, the more committed I become to making a heart-stopping drama which touches and angers millions of people all round the world.