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Daily Record
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Fantasy movie set during Highland Clearances stuns audiences at Cannes Film Festival
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. 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." 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. 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.
The National
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Film set during Highland Clearances wows at Cannes Film Festival
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. READ MORE: Bouncer-turned-filmmaker's Glasgow gangland drama becomes surprise smash TV hit 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.' (Image: Supplied) 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. (Image: Supplied) 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.
