A note on : Limbo, co-writing a film by Lotje Sodderland

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A few years ago I worked with the filmmaker Lotje Sodderland on a project about the human brain, amongst other things, and more recently she asked me to co-write a film she was developing. I drafted her idea, added to the script, offered a version of it, altered some narratives and then writing took on new forms, with Lotje’s work and improvised shooting as a mode. A really collaborative process, common to cinema of course.

As is the way with films, it took time to grow, get production underway, edit and alter, finding it’s final shape. This shape is nearly fixed and the result is something really poignant and elegant. The film is called LIMBO and here is what Ken Loach said about it:

‘This is a film of compassion and tender observation of lives we rarely see – it’s in the performance of the routine tasks made by one person for another that we start to grapple with meaning, dignity and what it is to be human.’

Pretty extraordinary, and for me too, as part of the writing team, it’s a great credit. The film should begin to see public eyes in 2021 and more can be found out about it here https://lief.london/portfolio/limbo The portrayal of real elderly men, isolated in London, found actors, is something so powerfully captured and really is painfully relevant given the announcement of a second lockdown here in the UK/