The Road Dance wins the Audience Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Cinematography by Petra Korner and Directed by Richie Adams. Starring Hermione Corfield (Mission: Impossible), Will Fletcher (The lord of the Rings) and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock).
The Road Dance transports the viewer back to the First World War, and the slow, tense build up towards the outbreak of battle, exploring the affects it had on communities across Britain. Here we enter the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Scottish Hebrides, meeting the young Kirsty MacLeod (Hermione Corfield), who longs for a route out of her small village life, with dreams of one day sailing across the Pond and starting anew in America. She shares these secret aspirations with her even-more-secret lover Murdo (Will Fletcher), though he’s conscripted, turning their feasible dreams into mere fantasies. On the evening before he leaves, the village hosts a road dance in aid of the young, departing boys, and it’s on this fateful night that Kirsty’s life changes forever.
Opening up with shots of the beautiful scenery of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, The Road Dance is immediately eye-catching, Scotland living up to its beautiful reputation and Petra Korner capturing it with confidence. The aesthetic of the piece is striking, it’s beautifully crafted, managing to blend the suffocation of Kirsty’s existence, with the freeing, endless possibility of the broad landscape. It’s quite a feat for us to get such a sense for her freedom and loneliness in equal measure.