Somers Town (film)

Infobox Film
name = Somers Town

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caption =
director = Shane Meadows
producer =
writer = Paul Fraser
narrator =
starring = Thomas Turgoose
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor =
released = 22 August 2008
runtime =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
budget =
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website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 1172206

"Somers Town" is a 2008 film directed by Shane Meadows, written by Paul Fraser and produced by Barnaby Spurrier. Starring Thomas Turgoose, Piotr Jagiello, Kate Dickie, Perry Benson, and Elisa Lasowski.

Plot

Somers Town follows two teenage boys Tomo and Marek, adrift in an adult world, who develop a mutual trust and acceptance through an unlikely friendship.Tomo runs away to London from a lonely, difficult life in the Midlands. Through a chance encounter he meets Marek, a Polish immigrant living with his father in Somers Town, central London.Unknown to his father, Marek begins hiding Tomo in his flat and the two boys go on little adventures, stealing clothes from a laundrette and earning money from an eccentric neighbour, Graham while sharing a growing obsession for Maria, the French waitress at their local café.

Production

The film is a black-and-white study of a social environment in London. It was originally conceived as a short film which began as a nine or ten-minute concept, with just a handful of pages, but they quickly realised it was growing into something larger. Meadows deliberately avoided pinning a set length to it. [ [http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/feature.php?id=513 EyeForFilm.co.uk] ]

Locations

Filming took place entirely in and immediately around Phoenix Court, a low rise council property in Purchese street.

Critical reception

The film was shown at the Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals. At Tribeca, stars Thomas Turgoose and Piotr Jagiello jointly shared the award for Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film. It had its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival on 20 June 2008, where it won the Michael Powell Award, the festival's highest award.

There has been a large amount of literature written under the mistaken impression that the film was part of an advertising campaign for Eurostar conceived by advertising agency Mother. The initial idea for a short film that was eventually to grow into the script for Somers Town was developed as part of Mother's pitch to win Eurostar's business. The agency had approached Shane Meadows about directing the short. While Mother was unsuccessful in their bid to win the Eurostar contract, the idea was taken on by Meadows usual script writer Paul Fraser. Tomboy films produced the film, securing £400,000 from Eurostar to fund it. Neither Eurostar nor Mother were involved in the production or the script writing process.

References

External links

* [http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=129564]
* [http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/85321/somers-town.html]
* [http://www.hollywood.com/photo_gallery/Somers_Town_Movie_Stills/5222081]
* [http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?film_id=13369 EyeForFilm.co.uk Review of Somers Town]
* [http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/news/view/2061/critic-s-choice/ "Critic's Choice" review] at Edinburgh International Film Festival]
* [http://uk.player.playnetworks.net/popup.php?mid=1178&version=2.0&channel_user_id=441100018-1&width=640&height=380&bgcolor=000000 trailer] #
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/22/bfsomers122.xml Telegraph.co.uk] Review of [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/22/bfsomers122.xml Somers Town]