Harvest

Caleb Landry Jones stars as a villager in feudal Britain facing threatening outside forces in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s dazzling adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel.

For a community of peasants living in feudal Britain, an insular village and its immediate surrounds are their entire world. There’s no cause to leave and certainly no reason for outsiders to visit them.

On the night that a barn is mysteriously set alight, however, three outsiders appear arousing suspicions, fear and heralding unforeseeable and unwanted change.

Curator’s Note

It might seem that Harvest represents a new direction for filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari. It’s a literary adaptation set in feudal Britain and it’s also the first collaboration between Tsangari and cinematographer Sean Price Williams, who previously shot films for the Safdie Brothers and Alex Ross Perry. His cinematography, on 16mm film, gives Harvest an aesthetic specificity befitting its setting.

In fact, Harvest is an apt continuation of Tsangari’s creative trajectory. The film is her second work set in Britain, following the TV series Trigonometry, which was set in West London and produced by the BBC. And much like her previous feature, Chevalier, Harvest has an insular microcosmic setting that analogously represents much broader concerns and worldviews.

Harvest premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it screened in competition.

– Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)