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Weekend Retreat (15)

+ director Q&A

UK, 2012, 76 mins, dir. Brett Harvey

Brothers Simon & Brett Harvey comprise the micro budget feature filmmaking team O-region, that brought us the black comedy Brown Willy last season. As we are celebrating filmmakers’ first features, this time we return to their earlier offering, Weekend Retreat  – the first low-budget title of theirs to be written and directed by Brett Harvey. We welcome Simon & Brett to Studio 74, to introduce their film and they will join us after the screening to provide a Q&A, discussing the joys, trials and tribulations of first feature production.

Produced in partnership with the Feast funding programme and supplemented by a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, the film stars Esther Hall (Rome, Waking The Dead, Spooks) Dominic Coleman (Psychoville, Special People, Clubbed) and Dudley Sutton (Lovejoy, The Football Factory, Dean Spanley).

Kevin and Gary Tregidger are estranged stepbrothers brought together by a family tragedy. Destitute, desperate and at their lucks end they hatch a plan to change their fortunes by burgling a large isolated house in the deserted Cornish countryside.

There’s just one snag: it’s the same house.

As the weekend draws on, the Campbells find themselves held hostage and the Tregidgers get increasingly out of their depth. The stakes are raised as secrets are revealed, relationships are pushed to breaking point and body parts are lost.

It has screened at a number of high-profile film festivals and won a range of prestigious awards. Karen and Duncan Campbell are stuck in a loveless marriage. Trying in vain to patch up their fractured relationship, they escape for the weekend in a picturesque house in the beautiful Cornish countryside.

Awards

Winner – Golden Chough Award, Cornwall Film Festival 2011

Winner – Best Writer/Director, London Independent Film Festival 2012

Winner – Best Feature Film, Bootleg Film Festival 2013

Winner – Best Female Actor in a Feature Film, Bootleg Film Festival 2013

“Weekend Retreat is a brilliant piece of writing brought to life by a fine cast and topped off with a great soundtrack. Mad, bad and wildly funny…”
SHELIA VANLOO, RADIO ST AUSTELL BAY

“Reminiscent of a playful Shane Meadows in tone”
DECLAN TAN, LITTLE WHITE LIES

“A darkly comic twist on the domestic hostage situation… adds momentum to the Cornish new wave”
DAVID PARKINSON, EMPIRE ONLINE

Venue: Studio 74, Exeter Phoenix