Red Road

To be shown: 23 June 2008

UK/Denmark 2006.
Director: Andrea Arnold.
Starring: Kate Dickie, Tony Curren, Martin Compston, Natalie Press.
Certificate 18. 112 minutes.

Synopsis

A dark, moody drama set in Glasgow.
Jackie (Kate Dickie) is a CCTV operator who watches multiple banks of monitors flickering with images of the lives of others. She appears solitary and without connection to the world outside her screens as she moves with detachment from the routine of her shifts to lone TV dinners and occasional loveless sex with a co-worker.
The oddly compelling scenes as she continues her surveillance of the desolate housing estates and scruffy shops that lead to Red Road are definately given time - this is not a film that hurries.
One day Jackie stares transfixed by a man who is caught on her screen. She ignores the other pictures and watches only Clyde (Tony Curren) as he roams Red Road. How does she know this man and what part has he played in her life that she watches and then follows him so obsessively.The mystery deepens as we realise he does not recognise her even as she sets about ensnaring him.
This is Kate Dickie's film. The camera follows her as closely as she follows Clyde and this is incredibly close as they share an amazingly intimate sex scene. Jackie's detachment makes this difficult to watch and even harder to understand. A brave and compelling performance. Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes 2006

Notes

Red Road is the first film in a trilogy of a project devised by a Danish production company. The aim is to encourage first time directors of feature films to use Glasgow and the same characters to tell three different stories.
Andrea Arnold wrote Red Road in collaboration with Anders Thomas Jensen who was also the writer of our first screening of this season After the Wedding

Red Road was awarded the Coup de Couer Dinard 2006

To deflect public curiosity when filming the crew would shout "Taggart" to bystanders.

The 30 storey blocks of flats that make up Red Road were built in 1931 and are now in the process of being demolished.

Andrea Arnold says she was inspired to write Red Road by the proliferation of CCTV cameras that now survey all our lives.