With Bird, the UK filmmaker returns to contemporary British terrain but adding fantastical flourishes.
“An idea is like a piece of wool,” says Andrea Arnold, offering a perspective on her return to modern-day Kent with her fifth fiction feature Bird. “Sometimes you pull it out and it just doesn’t go very far. Then sometimes you pull it out and it goes on and on. Bird was one of those. I was surprised, but you can’t argue with that calling. It knocks on your brain and you just do it.”
Bird is the story of Bailey, a 12-year-old girl living in a squat with her wayward father Bug and wannabe vigilante older half-brother Hunter. A chance meeting with a mysterious man calling himself Bird throws new light on Bailey’s difficult life and family ties.
The film stars newcomers Nykiya Adams as Bailey with Jason Buda as Hunter, who appear opposite international stars Barry Keoghan as Bug and Franz Rogowski as Bird. Arnold professes no knowledge of whether, as reported, Keoghan dropped out of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II to do Bird. Although his industry standing is different, her casting instinct remained the same as for the youngsters.
“When you cast, you just feel, ‘Oh yeah, they’re right.’ It’s a mysterious, magical thing,” she says. “You need to trust it, and I do. I had the exact same feeling when I met Barry and when I met Franz.”
Bird has been hatching for almost 10 years, says Arnold, who began developing it towards the end of 2016’s American Honey. She took it to Tessa Ross, who was putting together her House Productions; Ross was an executive producer on Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2011) while running Film4.
“I’ve known Tessa a long time,” says Arnold. “She said, ‘What do you want do to next?’ Usually when someone asks me that, I waffle on about something that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I’m lucky enough now that people go, ‘Do you want a bit of money for that waffle, to develop it?’ Then I go away and mess around with the image and see if I can make something out of it.”
At the same time, Arnold brought it to then-BBC Film head Rose Garnett, who she says – along with her successor Eva Yates – have been instrumental in bringing out the heart of the story. “Rose and Eva know it has got to come from you,” says Arnold. “It’s not prescriptive; it’s encouraging you to explore what you’re exploring and bring out more of that.”
Duty of care
For the young roles in Bird, Arnold leaned on Lucy Pardee, a casting assistant on the director’s Fish Tank who moved up to casting director on Wuthering Heights, American Honey and Bird.
The pair went into schools in the Thames estuary area of east London. “Lucy works incredibly hard at seeing the kids playing games,” says Arnold, adding that she flags up “anyone that she thinks is somebody I might respond to”.
Arnold has worked with now-established talents such as Michael Fassbender and Kaya Scodelario early in their careers. Not all her young performers have gone on to high-profile acting careers: while Fish Tank star Katie Jarvis has a number of subsequent screen credits, Wuthering Heights’ James Howson has left the industry.
The director is conscious of making the process enjoyable from the start – for those she casts as well as those she does not.
“We try not to do too much calling back with the kids – you don’t want too many callbacks then they don’t get it,” says Arnold. “We try to leave every kid with the positive things that came out of when they were there. It’s not okay to keep calling kids back 20 times – we minimise that and do two or three. I saw Nykiya twice, but the minute I met her I woke up and thought, ‘There’s something about her.’”
The duty of care with young actors extends beyond the shoot. “There are so many things you can do,” she says. “The main thing is getting the next level of support in place.” A key factor is “getting an agent who will take care and be responsible… will be the kind of agent that will take care not just of them getting jobs, but how they get jobs.”
Creative pivot
While Bird is a return to the contemporary British terrain of Fish Tank and Arnold’s Oscar-winning short Wasp, the support of Garnett, Yates and latterly BFI Film Fund director Mia Bays gave the filmmaker space to explore new forms of storytelling, including magical-realist flourishes around Rogowski’s character.
Bird shot in Gravesend, Kent in the summer of 2023. Arnold glosses over reported production difficulties regarding permits and release forms – saying only “we had some issues around the filming” – but adds that guidance from Bays in the edit helped revive an energy from the original script.
“Mia said, ‘Those three scenes are the same rhythm,’” says Arnold. “Her note was perfect, because it helped me understand that we had lost something from the script to the edit. So we were able to bring a bit of that back just by editing.”
Arnold looks beyond industry executives for feedback, also showing cuts to “neighbours and strangers” for a fresh perspective. “I give them anonymous forms to fill in, so they can say rude things, so they can be honest,” says the director. “You can really understand how it’s getting perceived or not understood.”
Bird debuted in Competition at Cannes, with Mubi acquiring UK and US rights during and shortly after the festival from Cornerstone Films. Its subsequent tour has included Telluride, Toronto, San Sebastian and a raucous BFI London Film Festival homecoming in October ahead of a November UK release.
“London was wild, it’s my favourite screening,” laughs Arnold. “I had a lot of family, friends and neighbours come. We had drinks before, maybe that’s why it was wild.”
Arnold compares that atmosphere to a cinema she used to frequent when living on London’s Holloway Road. “People were vocal, they would yell at the screen. I used to love that, I feel a bit sorry cinema’s not a bit more like that.”
Her next work will include FBI thriller Featherwood starring Scarlett Johansson, for which shoot dates and further cast are not set, but Arnold has done a recce in Texas. She has an idea for another film that will be “completely different to anything I’ve done before”, which she has not discussed with anyone. “As soon as you put an idea out there, everyone has an opinion and that interferes with the creative process.”
For now, she is happy to have returned to her roots – and made changes. “People tell me there’s division about my choices on this film, whether I should have done the magical-realism thing,” says Arnold. “Why can’t I just do whatever comes to mind? I went back to where I’ve done things before, but I didn’t do it the same way. It was an extension of what I’ve done – it was totally liberating.”
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