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| From left, Allison Gardner, Rory McCann, John Maclean, Tim Roth, Kôki, Takehiro Hira Photo: Amber Wilkinson |
Glasgow Film Festival opened its 25th edition last night - and the last with long-term director Allison Gardner at the helm - with the world premiere of John Maclean’s Scottish samurai movie Tornado.
The film, which sees a young woman (Kôki) going on the run from a gang of criminals led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden), played to packed and appreciative audience at Glasgow Film Theatre and was attended by the director, Roth, Kôki, Takehiro Hira, who plays her father in the film, and Rory McCann, who is one of Sugarman’s gang.
In a Q&A after the film, Maclean said he felt there was a similarity with his previous film Slow West.
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| Tim Roth, Kôki and John Maclean on GFF red carpet Photo: Courtesy of Glasgow Film Festival |
He said: “That was about immigrants in America and the fact that in 1860 America wasn’t full of Americans. It was about a young Scottish boy. I thought the same about Britain - why not have Britain as a land with a wandering Japanese samurai and a French bodybuilder and an English hoodlum and an African. So that was one of the ideas that connected both worlds.”
He added that another element was to focus on father and son and father and daughter relationships, “Your father’s trying to teach you things and you’re just not ready to listen and hopefully it’s not too late by the time you do start wanting to learn”.
Speaking about his character, Roth said: “It was such an anarchic and wild ride but that fit all the actually fit all of the performances and the characters.”
Speaking about the 25 day shoot, Maclean says that because of shooting on 35mm film - with Robbie Ryan as cinematographer - “I knew I wasn’t going to shoot much”.
He adds: “We just did one take on most of the stuff and everything was storyboarded. We just hammered through it, I think we were doing 30 or 40 set-ups a day. It was absolutely relentless but the fact of having one take and doing a storyboard actually gave us all a bit of freedom to chip in and collaborate.”
Roth adds: “It’s normally ‘hurry up and wait’ on a set - but we didn’t have any of that, we didn’t have time to wait. So the drive that we built as actors was unusual and refreshing.”
Glasgow Film Festival runs until March 9. Tornado will be relased in the UK on May 23.
