As cameras rolled on Johnny Barrington’s feature-directing debut Silent Roar in September 2021, it marked the fulfilment of a promise the writer/director had made to himself two decades previously as a young man living on the Hebridean island of Skye. “I was in a state of extreme excitement and also a kind of surreal state of disbelief that the day had finally come where I was shooting a feature film,” he says.
Produced by The Inbetweeners Movie’s Scottish producer Chris Young, who has lived on Skye for more than 20 years, and backed by BBC Film, the BFI and Screen Scotland, Silent Roar tells the story of a young surfer dealing with the grief of his father’s death. It stars newcomers Louis McCartney and Ella Lily Hyland.
Barrington says the film, which is nearing completion, has an essence “that is from the highlands and islands, in particular the Hebrides”, capturing the rugged beauty and distinctive character of the region. “It definitely contains elements of the Western Isles, Lewis in particular.”
Young also produced Barrington’s Bafta-nominated short Tumult, which played at Sundance in 2012, and runs talent development scheme Young Films Foundation on the Isle of Skye. Tumult plays with audience expectations and is clever, gruesome and funny in its tale of a group of Norse warriors crossing a barren land after a terrible battle. With the chief near death and about to hand over power to his son, the warriors are surprised when an army of a different kind descends on them.
Barrington first worked with Young in 2004 as a minibus driver on Simon David Miller’s Gaelic-language short Foighidinn: The Crimson Snowdrop, which Young produced. “It was a tremendous relief when he came on-board,” says Barrington of Silent Roar, which draws on moments from his own life and childhood, but is fictionalised to protect the innocent.
Now Glasgow-based, Barrington says he has three or four script ideas spanning both feature films and TV series, with all but one set in Scotland. “Among them is a kinky medieval love triangle, another is a psycho-noir set in the Antarctic.”
Between driving a bus on Snowdrop and writing and directing Tumult, Barrington also made shorts Trawler, Trout and Terra Firma.
Contact: Johnny Barrington
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