Panel: The Character Is the Plot

Why do some characters stay with us long after the credits roll, while others disappear the moment a film ends? It is the question every writer, director, actor, and film lover in the room has already asked themselves. This session exists to answer it – from two writers who have spent their careers making that question their central creative challenge.

The creator of John Wick, Derek Kolstad, and one of the most acclaimed dramatists in fifty years of British television, Stephen Poliakoff, have arrived at the same conviction by completely different routes: that character is not a component of storytelling but its engine. That grief, expressed through behaviour rather than explanation, is more powerful than any plot mechanic. That the audience connects most deeply with people, not structures.

This session is a conversation between two writers who have built long careers on that conviction, moderated by a journalist who has spent his career examining how the best writers think.