Two films set for release this year have been backed by the Welsh Government’s £30m Media Investment Budget. The most high profile of the two is Their Finest Hour and A Half. Based on the novel by Lissa Evans, the film is a romantic comedy following the misadventures of a British film crew as they try to make a morale boosting propaganda film during the Blitz. Half of the film was shot in Swansea and Pembrokeshire, and the big names who’ve been filming in Wales include Gemma Arterton, Bill Nighy, Sam Claflin, Helen McCrory, and Richard E. Grant. A range of Welsh businesses benefited from the filming, including Real SFX of Cardiff. Don’t Knock Twice is the second title to benefit from the Media Investment Budget. Director by Caradog James follows up 2013’s under appreciated sci-fi The Machine – which he also wrote and produced – with another genre film, this time a horror (a mother & daughter become involved in a demonic witch urban legend) starring Hollywood’s Katee Sackhoff.
By Any Other Name is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by best-selling Welsh author Catrin Collier (written under the thriller-writing persona of Katherine John). The film is set and filmed in the Brecon Beacons and surrounding areas; a thriller about an amnesiac found running bloodstained and half naked on the Beacons, with only a knowledge of Wales and sophisticated military techniques he finds himself on the run from both the Police and Military.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD5m2OTobZQ
Two music documentary feature films are set to be released this year. Massive: The Amazing Rise and Fall (out Feb) is a documentary about the underground music scene in the South Wales valleys, and some of Wales’ most popular bands that came out of it during the 2010s – hugely successful groups such as Funeral For A Friend, The Blackout and Kids In Glass Houses. Man in the Camo Jacket is the story of legendary Welsh rock singer, Mike Peters of The Alarm. The film documents Peters’s rise to fame, cancer battle, and inspiring recovery as he enlists some of the world’s top musicians to help save the lives of cancer patients around the globe. (“The film will hit the road with an accompanying bone marrow drive at each screening, leading to thousands of new donors and the potential for thousands of lives saved.”) …Camo Jacket is set to be released this year, a release that will be all the more affecting after last October Peters revealed he’s fighting cancer for a third time.
And the rest…
Ffilm Cymru Wales’ emerging talent scheme, Cinematic’s second film to go in to production is Chris Crow’s The Lighthouse, a psychological thriller starring Michael Jibson and Mark Lewis Jones based on the ‘Smalls Island incident of 1801’, one of the most infamous episodes in Welsh maritime history. Cinematic is also behind director of episodes of Dr Who, Broadchurch and Daredevil, Euros Lyn’s début feature Y Llyfrgell/The Library Suicides, based on Welsh author Fflur Dafydd’s offbeat thriller set in the National Library of Wales. Not much is known about Canaries – which wrapped filming this month – a sci-fi starring Robert Pugh and Kai Owen, where the first wave of an alien invasion coincides with New Year celebrations in a Welsh valley. “Coming Spring 2016” is Hiraeth, a 70s set drama from Dark Art Films – “two estranged sisters travel home to their father’s funeral to fulfill his dying wish”. Purple Sky Productions are a small, independent South Wales production company who successfully completed and distributed their first feature film, Hearts at War. Their second feature is Show Me Witch Way, a horror/thriller filmed in some familiar South Wales locations.
You can expect to see our Welsh actors/actresses in some big films too. Catherine Zeta-Jones in the big screen remake of Dad’s Army, out next month. Luke Evans stars in High Rise, Ben Wheatly’s adaptation of J G Ballard’s ‘seemingly unfilmable’ novel (released March). Alexandra Roach appears in the Snow White and The Huntsman prequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, alongside Chris Hemsworth and Jessica Chastain, out in April; and Michael Sheen and Rhys Ifans both appear in the sequel to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland – Alice Through The Looking Glass (May).
Lastly, a small mention to The Legend of Tarzan, which apparently filmed some scenes in Dinorwig Quarry, Gwynedd.
words CHRIS WILLIAMS, photo LEO HIDALGO