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Nikki Baughan chats to director Francis Lee about his bold debut feature, God’s Own Country, which opens the Edinburgh International Film Festival
‘I grew up in Yorkshire, in a very isolated place,’ says actor-turned-i lmmaker Francis Lee about the deeply personal inspiration behind his blistering rural drama debut God’s Own Country. ‘I escaped when I was 20, moved to London and went to drama school. But there was something about that landscape, those people and that way of life that cast a real shadow. When I decided to give up acting and make i lms, it felt a very natural place in which to explore stories.
‘I’d never seen that part of the world, something I was so familiar with, depicted on screen in the way in which I saw it,’ Lee continues. ‘I always felt like I was looking at the countryside as a tourist vista or a pretty postcard;
18 THE LIST 1 Jun–31 Aug 2017
it was pastoral, bucolic, calming, relaxing, slow. And I’d never seen it that way. For me, it had been cold, harsh and isolating.’
Johnny And it’s against the backdrop of this brutal landscape that young protagonist (Josh O’Connor) works his family’s struggling farm; a task made even more difi cult following the recent stroke of his father (Ian Hart). Geographically isolated and emotionally repressed, he numbs his physical and psychological pain by getting blind drunk and engaging in aggressive sex with anonymous lads. The arrival of sensitive Romanian farmhand Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) changes everything, igniting a spark in Johnny that’s not easily ignored.
Both O’Connor and Secareanu turn in astonishing performances in two challenging roles; a result, says their director, of careful preparation that went far beyond