Harvest

United Kingdom | 2024 | 131 min

Language: English

Subtitles: English

Suitable for audiences aged 16 and above

Director(s): Athina Rachel Tsangari

Script: Athina Rachel Tsangari, Joslyn Barnes, based on the book by Jim Crace

Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Harry Melling, Rosy McEwen, Arinzé Kene, Thalissa Teixeira, Frank Dillane

Production: Sixteen Films, The Match Factory Productions, Louverture Films, Haos Film, Faliro House, Meraki Films, BBC Film

Distribution: The Match Factory

Western | Drama | Dark Comedy

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Screenings:

The “Greek Weird” director Athina Rachel Tsangari delivers an acid Western for the 2020s. While traditional Westerns celebrate progress, many of its sub-genres, such as the acid Western, explore the underbelly of capitalist gain. Tsangari focus on private ownership and its consequences, including exploitation and the neverending search for scapegoats.

Harvest depicts an idyllic agrarian community in the Scottish Highlands that is destroyed by modernity. The events start unfolding as a group of youngsters starts a fire and blames it on three vagrants, and culminates in the takeover of the land by a distant cousin who wishes to make a profit.

The film deliberately avoids realism, unfolding instead like a dark hallucinatory journey. Shot on 16mm, cinematographer Sean Price Williams draws out the landscape in sensuous detail, focusing as much on the murky and muddy as the pastoral. The ensemble cast portray the closed-off community as odd, even if not quite Midsommar (2019) level. True to Western tradition, the historical setting reflects contemporary issues.

Tsangari’s directorial style trusts the viewer to piece together the connections to the present day on their own

Saara Tuusa