London Film Festival – Hometown Stories

Saturday night and fans flock to London’s Leicester Square, for the screening of some of this year’s most exciting movies. This is the 53rd BFI London Film Festival.

Having its British premier today was „Samson and Delilah“, an Australian made movie about Australia’s indigenous Aboriginal population. It centers around a love story between the two lead characters, who run off to Alice Springs together, Director Warwick Thornton’s home town.

[Warwick Thornton, Director ‚Samson and Delilah‘]:
‘You know, this is my people, this is my family. You know, I grew up in the desert. I am Aboriginal and this is what this story is about. You know, I grew up on the streets of Alice Springs. In a partial way I wrote Samson and Delilah with small inklings about who I am and how I grew up. So absolutely, it is the most important thing I’ve done to date.”

Thornton tells us that his reason for making this movie was a humble one, to raise awareness about the issues that face Aboriginal people in Austrailia. The movie’s phenomenal success has been somewhat a surprise.

[Warwick Thornton, Director ‘Samson and Delilah’]:
“It was for my people, so I was very wary about where this film was going to go and how it was going to be perceived. And then suddenly, the film’s made multiple millions in Australia. It’s at the Cannes Film Festival, it wins the Camera D’Or. You know, I’m in New York, I’m in LA, I’m in London right now. You know, so I’ve just had this incredible ride.”

Another Director to make a movie about his hometown this year is David Morrissey, with his offering „Don’t Worry About Me“ set in the northern British city of Liverpool.

[David Morrissey, Director ‚Don’t Worry About Me‘]:
“I have quite a nostalgic feel of Liverpool because I grew up there and left, and now I’m going back. And the city is changing, even now, it was actually changing right in front of me. I would choose locations and I would go and film them and they had gone, they had knocked them down. So it is changing fast, the city, so in the film you see a mixture of that old architecture and the new architecture of the city and I wanted to reflect that in the film.”

The London Film Festival runs until October 29th and we’ll be bringing you more exciting news about some of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the year.

Ben Hedges, NTD, London.

(NTDTV)