Forum of Independents - Competition 2008 / Poppy Shakespeare / United Kingdom 2007
A psychiatric patient of many years attending a London clinic meets an elegant black woman who insists she is not insane. The two young women strike up an unusual friendship... An outstanding adaptation of the novel by Clare Allan, who herself spent almost a third of her life in a psychiatric ward.
“N” has lived in the institutionalised world of a North London psychiatric ward for years upon years, and doesn’t want to change a thing about it. The turning point in her life comes with a new patient, an elegant and temperamental black woman named Poppy Shakespeare, who insists she is not insane. The two women strike up an unusual friendship... The outstanding drama is an adaptation of Clare Allan’s successful novel, which The Guardian newspaper described as Catch-22 meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. At once comic and tragic, lyrical and absurd, the story takes an inside look at a claustrophobic, upside-down world in which reality intermingles with fantasy and reason with insanity. In light of the fact that the book’s author spent almost a third of her life in a psychiatric ward, the story of the two women (portrayed superbly by Anna Maxwell Martin and Naomie Harris) can also be seen as a blistering exposé of the shortcomings of the British healthcare system.
89 min / Color, 35 mm
World premiere
Director Benjamin Ross
/ Screenplay Sarah Williams podle románu / based on a novel by Clare Allan
/ Dir. of Photography Danny Cohen
/ Music Molly Nyman, Harry Escott
/ Editor David Charap
/ Producer Charles Steel, Alasdair Flind
/ Production Cowboy Films Ltd.
/ Cast Naomie Harris, Anna Maxwell Martin, Tessa Peake Jones, Adrian Scarborough, Cathy Murphy
/ Contact Cowboy Films Ltd.
Benjamin Ross (b. 1964, London) studied at St Catherine’s College in Oxford. He drew attention with his very first work, a crime drama based on a true story called The Young Poisoner’s Handbook (1994). His made-for-television retro-drama RKO 281 (1999), about the making of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), earned him a number of awards, including a Golden Globe and three Emmy Awards. After the short film Torte Bluma (2005), which is set in World War II, Ross took part in the making of the portmanteau film 3 & 3 (2005). He is currently teaching film studies at Columbia University in New York and working on the television series Terminal. His romantic drama Napoleon and Betsy will premiere next year.
Cowboy Films Ltd.
26, Nassau Street, W1W 7AQ, London
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 207 255 6756
Fax: +44 207 255 1132
E-mail: [email protected]
Alasdair Flind
Producer
Benjamin Ross
Film Director, Film Director
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