NORTHERN SOUL
On a bright, crisp day in late November 2019, Total Film is catching a train from Keighley station to travel through bucolic Yorkshire countryside, the fields painted with frost. As TF’s breath mists in the vintage train commissioned just for this journey on the Worth Valley Railway, actors Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook sit further down the carriage admiring the view and flirting, as writer/director Clio Barnard watches from behind the camera – smiling as it catches a moment of sunny loveliness inside and outside the train.
Those familiar with Barnard’s Bradford-set socio-realist output might be surprised to find the Otley-born filmmaker looking for lightness and love in her fourth film set in her homeland. Her debut was an unflinching look at the racism, deprivation and alcoholism that plagued playwright Andrea Dunbar, charted the tragedy of two young boys driven to danger by poverty and lack of opportunity, explored PTSD and incest. , the and that compressedtime romance as it is to the former wool capital.
