Projects matching: Peter Mullan

Synopsis

Adapted from Raymond Carver's short story 'Neighbours' this film examines a middle aged couple's exposure to an enviable lifestyle and the effect it has on their relationship.

Synopsis

'If you want a Ned, I'll give you a fu*king Ned!'

Glasgow, 1973. On the brink of adolescence, young John McGill's about to start secondary school. He's a bright boy, a sensitive boy, eager to learn, but the cards are stacked high against him. The McGill family's dirt poor, his hated father's a drunken bully. His teachers - punishing John for the 'sins' of his older brother Benny - are down on him from the start. John's on his own.

And then there's the gangs. The Neds. Non-Educated Delinquents. The bad boys with weapons and attitude: cheap drugs, glam rock, fumbling sex, the violence and the camaraderie of the streets. Local monsters. Local heroes. Benny's fearsome reputation buys John protection, and then a way in. Scared, resentful, full of rage, John makes his decision. If no one else will give him a chance: fu*k them.

John takes to the savage life of the streets with a vengeance. But as his rage and frustration spin him further and further out of control, he is left facing a blank wall. No future. With one extraordinary chance of redemption.

Synopsis

Boy A is a powerful coming-of-age story that looks at difficult questions concerning rehabilitation and redemption through the story of one young man. Jack, at the age of 24, has spent most of his young life in juvenile prisons for the murder of another child. Released from prison into a sometimes bewildering adult world, Jack is given a new name, new job, new home, a new life. But anonymity is both a blessing and a curse as Jack has to contend with not being able to tell the people he gets to know, and love, of his true past and the monstrous crime he committed as a minor.

Synopsis

Chris, a cocky young traveller in Africa, loses his passport in an altercation with the police, and has to stow away on The Gull, a cargo ship bound for Marseilles to get home. On board, he quickly discovers that The Gull is no ordinary vessel, and that its crew - led by the enigmatic, haunted Captain Brookes - harbours a terrible secret. Chris hides and watches, increasingly disturbed by what he witnesses. Discovered, he fears for his life, but is reprieved by Brookes who – drawn by the young man's naivete and spirit - offers him his protection. Both compelled and repelled by the Captain, Chris accepts reluctantly, and is set to work in the kitchen with Baptist, the cook. Tensions rise amongst the volatile sailors, and despite himself, Chris is trapped in their desperate, deadly pact. When crew members begin disappearing, it becomes apparent that he is not the only stranger on board.

As paranoia mounts, as the remaining crew grow increasingly violent, and as Brookes' precarious mask of sanity begins to slip, Chris is forced into a lethal game of cat and mouse, faced with the unbearable choice between fighting for survival at all costs, or following his conscience and risking his life. What's in the hold?

Synopsis

The Stone of Destiny was used for centuries in the coronations of the monarchs of Scotland until it was captured in 1296 by Edward I and taken to Westminster Abbey where it resided for over six and a half centuries. Stone of Destiny tells the true story of how on Christmas Day 1950, four Scottish students took the stone from Westminster Abbey, hid it in Kent for a few weeks before returning it north to Scotland. It is based on the book The Taking of the Stone of Destiny, written by Ian Hamilton, the leader of the students.

Synopsis

A trawler and its crew struggle to make ends meet as fish stocks dwindle. Desperate to maintain a livelihood that has existed in the family for generations, the Skipper's son, Sean (Martin Compston) decides to take on a secret cargo of Chinese immigrants. The trip back to Scotland becomes a nightmare as the stowaways endure hell in the hold. The Skipper (Gary Lewis), apparently unaware of his cargo, keeps the boat at sea chasing the big catch that will save his boat. 

Written and directed by first time feature director Steve Hudson, with a powerful ensemble cast, this is a compelling and harrowing story of desperation and its tragic consequences.

Synopsis

Frank (Peter Mullan) determines to salvage his self-esteem and to tackle his demons by attempting the ultimate test of endurance - to swim the English Channel. On a Clear Day is a classic blend of comedy and high drama, an inspiring tale of triumph over adversity that will touch you and leave you wanting more.

Synopsis

Running from a dark secret, Danish backpacker Mike Hammershoi (Anders W. Berthelsen) arrives at Black's estate in the Scottish Borders, looking for work. Cut off from the outside world, Francis Black) Peter Mullan, the blind owner, lives there in a shuttered-up, decaying mansion, with his elderly mother Bella (Phyllida Law).
 
Francis reluctantly offers the traveller a low-paid job in the yard. Put off by the unsettling atmosphere, Mike declines the offer. But as he turns to go, he sets eyes on Rachel (Jodhi May), Francis' enigmatic young wife, and changes his mind. Mike starts work on the farm, dumping the debris of the Blacks' once-successful business into the mud pit - a bottomless vortex of quicksand at the end of the land.
 
Mike soon realises that Francis, increasingly embittered by his blindness, exerts a domineering power over Rachel. Rachel, emotionally suffocated by her husband, is increasingly attracted to Mike, whose presence awakens her pent-up sexual desire. Unable to resist each other, they become lovers. As the sexual tension increases, so too does Francis' jealousy rage. In a fit of anger, Francis sacks the traveller. The threat of Mike's departure forces Rachel to choose between her husband and her lover. Unaware of his dark past, Rachel decides to run away with Mike. Seething with fury, Francis stands, knife in hand, by the edge of the mud-pit waiting for the unsuspecting lovers as they prepare to make their escape.

Synopsis

This is a love story, not Helen and Joe, but the whole family. Helen (late 30s) is wife, mother and daughter and, on the morning we meet her, is killed in a road accident. But Helen doesn't know she is dead, and neither does her husband, Joe, who is a truck driver travelling home to London from war-torn Eastern Europe. The film charts the four-day odyssey of the family until Joe's return: the children and Grandpa at home struggling with what has happened, Joe over scary and unpredictable terrain and Helen through limbo to the moment when she and Joe finally reconcile their love and she is free to leave in peace. In the tragedy comes the seed of hope for the future.

Synopsis

Directed by Sarah Gavron and produced by Stewart Mackinnon, This Little Life is the story of a premature baby's fragile existence, and of a mother's supreme trust and tragic betrayal. Rosemary Kay's screenplay was awarded the BBC's Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award and is an adaptation of her novel Between Two Eternities.

Luke is born prematurely weighing only one pound and four ounces. He is too small to be cradled in his mother's arms but can be held in the palm of her hand. Everything possible is done to keep him alive, but what does her son want? Luke's mother, Sadie, desperately wants him to have a voice and, through her friendship with a young boy, mother and son find a way to talk.

Synopsis

Set in a steamy Glasgow of the early 1950s, the film focuses on the existential crisis of Joe (Ewan McGregor), a rootless young drifter who finds work on a barge owned by the down-to-earth Les (Peter Mullan) and his enigmatic wife Ella (Tilda Swinton). One afternoon Joe and Les happen upon a corpse of a young woman floating in the water. Accident? Suicide? Murder?

As the police investigate the case and a suspect is arrested, it becomes evident that Joe knows more about the drowned woman than he is letting on. Meanwhile, against the background of this mysterious death and the 'murder' investigation, Joe and Ella embark on an intimate and passionate affair.
 
Tim Cumming, writing in The Guardian, 8 August 2003:
Alexander Trocchi was the smack-addled icon of beat literature, whose writings have been eclipsed by a lurid life of porn, pimping and dissolution in New York, Paris and London. But with a new film out adapted from his novel Young Adam, the Glasgow-born writer's life and work are ripe for re-evaluation.

 
 

Synopsis

The Magdalene Asylums in Ireland were run by the Sisters of Mercy on behalf of the Catholic Church. Young girls were sent there by families or orphanages and once there, were imprisoned and sent to work in the laundries where they could atone for their sins. Their sins varied from being unmarried mothers to being too pretty, too ugly, simple minded, too clever or being a victim of rape and talking about it. And for their sins they worked 364 days a year unpaid, they were half starved, beaten, humiliated, raped, their children forcibly removed from them. Their sentence was indefinite. Thousands of women lived and died there. The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed in 1996, five years ago.

This film is from the point of view of four of these young women in the 1960s, an era mistakenly seen by some as a time of unchallenged female liberation. These young Catholic women find themselves in an almost medieval nightmare whilst the outside world tacitly (or in some cases actively) supports a theocratic state. It looks at how their personalities develop for better and for worse in an environment controlled and dominated by celibate women, servants of God, Brides of Christ. In their own ways the girls refuse to be beaten, but what victory is there if they remain imprisoned as little more than slaves? One gets out in a heartbreakingly banal fashion, one is imprisoned in a mental asylum, two finally rebel, run away, escape.

It is a fictional film that unfortunately happens to be true.