The long-awaited new film Harvest by Athina Rachel Tsangari, one of the pioneers of the Greek Weird Wave, is an adaptation of the award-winning novel by English author Jim Crace. It is a portrait of an old-world peasant community, which, during a fateful week, is thrown into chaos by the forces of xenophobia, racism, and capitalism.
Set in an unnamed village in the Scottish countryside, the story features, among others, the lord of the manor Kent (Harry Melling), the nature-loving loner Walter (Caleb Landry Jones), and the fiery Kitty (Rosy McEwen, known from Blue Jean, which was screened at the Midnight Sun Film Festival in 2023). A barn set ablaze stirs the villagers’ suspicions towards outsiders, while the looming industrial revolution threatens their harmonious way of life.
This hypnotically told tragicomic tale draws inspiration from 1970s westerns. Sean Price Williams’ cinematography captures the muddy farmlands and the villagers’ ecstatic dances with breathtaking beauty.
Harvest is Tsangari’s first English-language film and only her fourth feature in a directing career spanning a quarter century.
Inari Ylinen