The independent UK film industry is “coming to grips” with leaving the European Union, suggested Bring Them Down director Chris Andrews, at the Rome Film Festival this week.
The sheep-farming revenge tale starring Barry Keoghan, Christopher Abbott and Colm Meaney was produced by the UK’s Wild Swim Films; Ireland’s Tailored Films and Belgium’s Frakas Productions.
“We’re in a point in the UK where we are coming to grips with what’s happened post b-word [Brexit],” said Andrews. “The space that we’ve found ourselves in, because we don’t have the access to the [Creative Europe] MEDIA programme anymore [we need to be] thinking about how we can co-produce and make new relationships.
“[Bring Them Down] was a co-production between the UK, Ireland, and Belgium and I find that exciting because it makes me think about stories in a different way; how can they be different and be challenged by this way of financing? I think the global screen fund has made a huge difference to us [and] a huge difference to a lot of films, including ours.”
Funding for the project came from sources including the UK Global Screen Fund, Screen Ireland, RTÉ and Comisiun Na Mean, and Mubi.
Andrews also explained how the film’s plot, which addresses toxic masculinity and violence in small-town communities, reflects global issues.
“I was trying to explore in the story [how] an inability to express yourself verbally and connect emotionally often evokes violent responses because you’re frustrated and always on the defensive. It feels like that is quite a global thing with different countries not being able to communicate and find a point of commonality.”
“[The sheep in the story] have no agency and have an innocence, and that alludes to the idea that in conflict it’s so often the innocents that are the victims of conflict - women, children or people with no agency who are caught in between two warring factions that are so blindly furious with the other side that they cant even see the chaos that they are creating.”
Colm Meaney added: [My character] was a very repressed man and lots of people from my generation in Ireland were like that – men are not supposed to express feelings- so I could relate to it!”
Bring Them Down is playing in competition at the Rome Film Festival.
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