Ruth Wilson, Mark Stanley, Sean Bean
Clio Barnard, one of the UK’s most distinctive contemporary filmmakers, follows The Selfish Giant and The Arbor with a searing Yorkshire-set drama that’s fast gaining critical acclaim from its first screenings at Toronto International Film Festival.
Following her father’s death, casual farm labourer Alice (Ruth Wilson of iHBO’s The Affair, BBC’s Luther) returns home to Yorkshire for the first time in 15 years to claim ownership of the family farm she believes is rightfully hers. In the intervening years her older brother Joe (Mark Stanley, Game of Thrones) has been struggling to look after their father (Sean Bean) and keep the farm from going under. After she returns, a bitter dispute erupts between the siblings over the tenancy of the farm. Battling to regain control in a fraught and fragile situation, Alice must confront traumatic memories to find a way to restore the farm and salvage the bond with her brother before both are irrevocably lost.
Inspired by Rose Tremain’s novel Trespass and combining the poetic realism of The Selfish Giant with a heightened strain of tragedy, Barnard weaves a dark contemporary folk tale out of familial trauma and exploitation.