Fantasy movie set during Highland Clearances stuns audiences at Cannes Film Festival

Daily Record

28-05-2025

Scottish director Ian Gordon brought The Gudeman, a fantasy film set during the Highland Clearances, to Cannes.
A Scottish director has turned one of the darkest chapters of the nation's history into a fantasy adventure film that stunned audiences at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Ian Gordon, from Fife, took to the red carpet in France wearing a kilt to promote his new movie The Gudeman, set during the Highland Clearances.
The film blends myth and history, telling the story of a tormented man sent to evict villagers from a rural Scottish settlement, only to become entangled in a fierce battle between ancient mythical beings while being relentlessly stalked by a sinister force.
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Gordon, who shot the film in the rugged northern landscapes that shaped the tale, said: "People in the industry from around the world were blown away by the dramatic scenery of the Highlands."
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While fantasy may drive the plot, The Gudeman draws deeply from a painful true event. The Highland Clearances saw thousands of Scots driven from their homes throughout the Highlands and Islands during the 18th and 19th centuries.
It was a period marked by economic upheaval, brutal eviction, cultural suppression, and mass migration. By the early 1700s, Scotland's Lowlands were becoming increasingly urban and aligned with English culture, language and politics.
The Highlanders, in contrast, were rural and still rooted in the centuries-old clan system. Clans were collective communities tied by kinship, with chiefs leasing land to tacksmen who in turn sublet it to tenant farmers.
The social fabric was not only agricultural but also martial, with warriors owing allegiance to their chiefs, often surviving through raids and warfare.
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Everything changed after the 1745 Jacobite uprising. Charles Edward Stuart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, rallied Highland support in a doomed bid to reclaim the British throne.
His army was crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, where thousands of Highlanders were slain. In the aftermath, around 1,000 more were hunted down and killed. Entire clans were wiped out or driven into exile.
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Even before the battlefield bloodshed, the traditional clan structure had started to fray under James VI and I, who forced Highland chiefs to spend long spells at court in an attempt to prevent rebellion.
But following Culloden, destruction came swiftly. The British government imposed harsh restrictions aimed at dismantling Highland culture: bagpipes were banned, clan tartans outlawed, and the land itself was opened up for outsiders to buy.
A wave of wealthy landlords swept in, determined to reshape the Highlands into profitable farmland. Over the next century, a series of evictions followed in phases, now remembered collectively as the Highland Clearances.
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One of the most infamous figures was George Granville Leveson-Gower, later the Duke of Sutherland. Between 1810 and 1820, under the advice that his estate was more suitable for sheep than people, he expelled thousands of tenants. Their homes were burned, their land converted into vast sheep farms.
According to Historic UK, around 15,000 people were removed from land owned by the Duchess of Sutherland and her husband the Marquis of Stafford between 1811 and 1821 to make room for 200,000 sheep.
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Displaced families were moved to tiny coastal crofts where they had to survive on rocky, infertile land. Many were forced into unfamiliar trades like fishing or kelp collecting. Kelp, used to make potash and iodine, was briefly a booming industry at the time.
Others turned to cattle farming or intensive crop cultivation, but the economic blows kept coming. The kelp industry collapsed and cattle prices plummeted.
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Then, in the mid-1840s, came the potato famine. By 1846, famine had taken hold of the Highlands. Crofters, who had no legal claim to the land, faced disease and starvation.
Tens of thousands emigrated in desperation. Some moved to the Lowlands to work in factories. Others set sail for Canada, America, or Australia, many as indentured servants clinging to the hope of one day owning land.
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Some emigrants paid their own way. Others had their journeys funded by landlords who preferred to clear their land than provide charity.
The injustice sparked a wave of sympathy and activism. In 1883, the government launched the Napier Commission to investigate crofters' conditions. The Highland Land Law Reform Association, known as the Land League, was also formed.
Three years later, Parliament passed the Crofters Holdings Act, ensuring crofters would no longer face arbitrary eviction. It granted them the "three Fs": fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure.
Now, centuries later, Gordon's haunting tale of eviction, revenge, and folklore is bringing that brutal history back into the spotlight, framed by the haunting beauty of the land where it all began.