Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival today, 17 May 2013, as part of the Directors Fortnight. A contemporised adaptation of the Oscar Wilde fairy tale, the film was shot over a six week period in Bradford in autumn 2012 and produced by Tracy O’Riordan of Moonspun Films.
The Selfish Giant is a contemporary fable about 14-year-old Arbor (Conner Chapman) and his best friend Swifty (Shaun Thomas). Excluded from school and outsiders in their own community, the boys meet Kitten (Sean Gilder), a local scrapman, and begin collecting scrap metal for him using a horse and cart. Swifty has a natural gift with horses and Arbor has a business brain and a way with words – they make a good team. But when Arbor begins to emulate Kitten by becoming greedy and exploitative, tensions build, leading to a tragic event which transforms them all irrevocably.
The Selfish Giant stars Sean Gilder (The Fall, Shameless), Siobhan Finneran (Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Downton Abbey), Lorraine Ashbourne (Oranges and Sunshine), Steve Evets (Looking for Eric), Elliott Tittensor (Spike Island, Shameless) and talented newcomers Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas in their debut acting roles. The Selfish Giant is backed by the BFI Film Fund and Film4.
Bradford UNESCO City of Film assisted in the production in a number of ways, from advise and assistance on securiing locations for shooting, to assistance with office accommadation for the production crew.
We wish the film and the team every success at Cannes and for the future.
