Iona

2014 / 1:2,39 / Alexa Arri Raw + Amira / 90min

REGIE
Scott Graham

PRODUKTION
Margaret Matheson, Boudica Ltd mit dem BFI und Scottish Film Fund
Ko-Produzenten: Hanfgarn & Ufer Filmproduktion

CAST
Ruth Negga, Tom Broke, Michelle Duncan, Ben Gallagher, Douglas Henshall, Jim Sturgeon, Matthew Zajac

Festivals

• Film Festival de San Sebastian, Spanien 2015 / Sektion New Director
• 33. Film Festival Turin 2015
• Film Festival Hamburg, Sektion Europäische Kino-Koproduktionen, Oktober 2015
• Achtung Berlin Film Festival 2016
• Kinostart Großbritannien: 24.03.2016

Iona references both the film’s setting and its central character. Iona and her teenage son wash up on the shores of Iona, running from a violent past in Glasgow. It’s instantly apparent that Iona is returning rather than arriving. For Iona, the island is a place filled with happy memories but also a place where she feels unwelcome and out of place. What follows are intense and mysterious interactions with different local residents. Iona is something of a ghost, seemingly and unintentionally haunting the Islanders for reasons unknown.

The feature is as much about the protagonist’s son as it is about her, a loving single mother. An adolescent on the cusp of manhood, he is also deeply tormented about whatever it is they’ve left behind them on the mainland. Most of Iona is told through glances and inner thinking. There is as much glorious wind howling as there is dialogue. The film creates a wonderful sense of atmosphere and, oddly, temperature. The houses provide a comforting shelter from the cruel winds that rage outside, a metaphor for the shelter the island provides Iona from the rage and bad energy of her past life.