\n\tFor Helen Walsh, place comes first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cPlace is always my starting point. It\u2019s an active force that shapes and informs our identities right throughout our lives,\u201d said the novelist-turned-director, whose sophomore feature \u201cOn the Sea\u201d world premieres in competition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.<\/p>\n
\n\tFollowing her 2015 debut, \u201cThe Violators\u201d \u2013 which also bowed at Edinburgh and earned her a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit recognition \u2013 writer-director and award winning novelist Walsh returns to the festival with another intimate, place-rooted drama.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tProduced by David A. Hughes and David Moores of Merseyside\u2019s Red Union Films, \u201cOn the Sea\u201d was ultimately made for under \u00a31 million ($1.36 million).<\/p>\n
\n\tWalsh admits that scaling back came with trade-offs, but her producers embraced the challenge. \u201cWe had a really strong script and Helen had found the perfect chemistry in Barry Ward and Lorne MacFadyen,\u201d says producer David Moores. \u201cWe had a tight window for both the actors\u2019 availability as a duo plus the seasonal calendar of the mussel beds to consider. We considered delaying the shoot in order to raise the extra finance, but ultimately decided to opt for shooting with our preferred cast on a smaller budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHelen favors working with a small, intimate crew and likes to shoot within a 5-10 mile radius, which suited our scaled-down model. There were inevitably compromises, but very few of these were creative ones. It was a huge challenge but our team all bought into the \u2018guerrilla+\u2019 aspect of the shoot and went above and beyond to help Helen achieve her vision.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBarry Ward (\u201cBad Sisters\u201d), Lorne MacFadyen (\u201cVigil\u201d) and Liz White (\u201cLife on Mars\u201d) lead the cast. Ward plays Jack, a mussel bed worker who has been married to Maggie (White) for more than half his life. Jack assumes his teenage son will join the family business, working alongside his brother Dyfan and Dyfan\u2019s three sons, until the arrival of deckhand Daniel (MacFadyen) forces him to confront long-suppressed truths.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI wanted to make a film about a good man from a small fishing village, who has lived by the tenets of family, community and the church,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cHe makes the momentous decision to come out mid-life \u2013 a time when he risks losing everything he holds dear.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe road to \u201cOn the Sea\u201d started with location rather than story. Walsh spent years searching, from Oban to the Isle of Man, before encountering the mussel men of the Menai Strait. \u201cFrom the moment I saw the beds, I knew I had to write about them. It\u2019s a vanishing tradition. These huge, stoic men go out every day, even when it no longer makes financial sense.\u201d she described.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe director embedded herself in the community, sourcing extras locally and spending weeks on the beds. \u201cWhen you first fetch up somewhere, you\u2019re imposing your own mythologies. Spending time there strips that away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\tWorking with cinematographer Sam Goldie, Walsh built a visual language months before shooting. \u201cMost of the first half is in close-up, to create Jack\u2019s claustrophobia in this enclosed, oppressive landscape he both loves and resents,\u201d she explained. \u201cOnly when Daniel arrives do we lean into the big wides \u2013 he literally smashes down Jack\u2019s boundaries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe edit was equally transformative. \u201cInitially, there were three stories \u2013 the marriage, the attraction, and the family of men bound by tradition. But Jack\u2019s journey became the centrifugal force,\u201d Walsh outlined. One of the film\u2019s most affecting moments \u2013\u00a0 a quiet gesture of empathy between Barry Ward\u2019s Jack and newcomer Leisa Gwenllian who plays his son\u2019s girlfriend \u2013 was born out of the edit. Watching early cuts, Walsh realized Jack\u2019s story felt \u201cunremitting\u201d in its bleakness. \u201cMy stomach sank. It was hopeless for Jack, too desperate,\u201d she recalled. She went back to shoot the understated but key scene, which she describes as \u201ca simple act of human kindness\u201d at Jack\u2019s lowest point. \u201cIt hints at the optimism the younger generation might bring through. There wasn\u2019t a dry eye in the room when we filmed it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWard\u2019s performance proved crucial. \u201cBarry says so much with so very little, and our lens never tires of him,\u201d Walsh said. To help convey Jack\u2019s inner world, she gave him Robert Seethaler\u2019s remarkable and quiet novel \u201cA Whole Life.\u201d For MacFadyen, whose disruptive presence is fundamental to the piece, she suggested \u00c9douard Louis\u2019 \u201cWho Killed My Father\u201d to explore Daniel\u2019s complex backstory.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile \u201cOn the Sea\u201d depicts prejudice, it resists caricature through its specificity of this community, in this place of sea and land, at this time. \u201cIt\u2019s about respecting the community you\u2019re portraying, involving them from the start, and allowing yourself to be challenged,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cI think female directors can open up spaces for more nuanced depictions of masculinity. The tide is turning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Walsh, the story ultimately comes down to resilience. \u201cI wanted to make a film about courage and hope,\u201d she concludes. \u201cI grew up in a small town just like Jack\u2019s, and I understand why he made the choices he made, why he married a woman when his heart was with men.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWith sales handled by The Yellow Affair<\/a>, \u201cOn the Sea\u201d will premiere in competition for Edinburgh\u2019s Sean Connery Prize<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Helen Walsh, place comes first.\u00a0 \u201cPlace is always my starting point. It\u2019s an active force that shapes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,123512,4884,712,123513,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-348905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-edinburgh-film-festival","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-scotland","13":"tag-the-yellow-affair","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115037960184954723","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}