Film set during Highland Clearances wows at Cannes Film Festival

The National

28-05-2025

Ian Gordon, from Fife, travelled to the internationally renowned film festival in France to promote his fantasy adventure movie, The Gudeman, where he learnt to build animatronic 'creatures' from scratch.
Gordon said that people working in the film industry from around the world were blown away at the festival by the dramatic scenery of the Highlands, which provides the backdrop for his adventure.
The Scottish filmmaker secured funding for his 'Pan's Labyrinth meets the Revenant' style film in 2023 after his previous film, Superterranean, was picked up by the streaming giant Amazon Prime.
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Set during the Highland Clearances, the film tells the tale of a troubled man who is sent to carry out evictions in a rural Scottish town, only to be caught up in a bitter feud between mythical creatures and is relentlessly stalked by a sinister force.
'It made people pay attention. The visuals of the film, people had a really good reaction to them,' Gordon said.
'I had this book that I took out, which was full of stills that were shot from the Highlands, from places like Torridon, Assynt, Orkney, Skye, and we've got these beautiful mountains shots, wilderness shots, forest shots that went down an absolute storm.'
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Gordon said he was inspired by films like Jason and the Argonauts, which he grew up watching, and loved the idea of having hand-made monsters and creatures with a historic backdrop.
The filmmaker made his own monsters for the film using techniques like 3D printers and said that building a goblin with no prior experience of animatronics or electronics was no picnic, as it took many failures to get it right.
Despite the difficulties of learning how to create his own handmade creatures, Gordon insisted they are an integral part of the story, as he wanted to explore Scotland's folklore in the film.
He said: 'When I was looking into folklore in the Highlands, I found that a lot of those traditions were oral traditions, and a lot of them had been lost with things like the clearances.
'When the clearances occurred, you lost not just people and not just traditions, but you also lost some of the culture with the stories.
'I kind of felt like it's like if you capture a slice of that, then it helps tell that story of why these things are gone and why you don't see folk creatures anymore.'
Gordon said that many of the producers he spoke with at Cannes loved the idea of his Highland-inspired folklore animatronic 'creatures', but it was one British distributor who had concerns that the film's context of the clearances would not translate over to other international audiences.
(Image: Supplied)
But the filmmaker believes his adventure story would resonate with audiences from all over the world.
Gordon said: 'It's set in these sort of beautiful surroundings, and whilst the Highland clearances are part of the story, it's not necessary for you to understand the whole context, and we don't tell the whole story about the Highland clearances.
'It's really just a backdrop, in the same way that you can watch Pan's Labyrinth and that you don't really need to fully understand what the Spanish Civil War was about.'
Although The Gudeman piqued the interest of a lot of the international crowd at the festival, it was Gordon and the film's cinematographer Sandy Henderson's attire that stole the show.
The pair decided the best way to capture the attention of all the big names in the film industry would be to turn up in kilts.
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A tactic which paid off for the pair, who were not only inundated with people wanting to speak with them but were also featured in an online fashion magazine after being invited onto the red carpet, with the photographer saying they were 'the best dressed' out of all the attendees.
The pair were even given tickets to the screening of The Sound of Falling, which won the Cannes Jury Prize, where the pair walked the red carpet outside the cinema before it was shown.
'This was the first day we were there, so we had been up since three in the morning, but we thought, 'well this is why we're here',' Gordon said.
'So, we went in straight away and sat down and watched the film, which turned out to be two and a half hours long, so it's a really long film,' the filmmaker joked.
With filming two-thirds complete for The Gudeman, Gordon said he hopes to have it wrapped up by the end of the year.
He added that with the interest generated at the Cannes Film Festival, it will help provide some extra pressure to get the project completed.