Clio Barnard's second feature film The Selfish Giant, an update on Oscar Wilde's short story for children, has wrapped after a six-week shoot in the writer/director's hometown of Bradford.
Barnard's striking and innovative debut The Arbormarked her out as a talent to watch and her follow-up was born of that experience. Her adaptation of Wilde's story was fuelled by the people she met working on that documentary, right down to a teenager called Arbor. If this trend catching on, look out for a character called 'Battleship' in Peter Berg's new film.
Billed as a contemporary fable about two teenage boys who become ensnared in a world of copper theft, Barnard describes it as "a retelling of a fairy tale based on fact”. The story sees 14 year-old Arbor (newcomer Conner Chapman) and his best friend Swifty (Shaun Thomas) meet Kitten (Sean Gilder), a local scrapman, and start gathering scrap for him with a horse and cart. All's well to begin with until rivalry builds and a tragic event befalls the pair.
No word on a release date yet but look out for this one in the first half of next year.