“When you wake up in a car, you never really know where you are.”

The Film Agency for Wales, First Light and The Big Lottery have agreed funding for our latest young peoples film production Road Movie, set to start in mid-February. This will be our first young people’s film project in Wales. The film will premiere at the world renowned Hay Literature Festival in May.

In an isolated Welsh town where the Black Mountains dominate the skyline and day trippers dominate the shops there is one thing that dominates the minds of the young people who live there. Cars. Road Movie is a love affair with the car, its vices, its pleasures and its possibilities.

Road Movie is a personal love affair with the car. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, house prices booming and local employment paying barely enough to pay the rent, the car represents the last stab of personal freedom for many young people who live in the remote borders of Wales and England. The car not only takes them places, it becomes their portable living room, the space for them to dream, the means for them to escape.

All of the group of young people are drawn to the freedom and personal choice that having access to a car brings them. They all live in the middle of nowhere and even though they know friends who have been badly injured or even killed in cars, they still have a romantic idea about how safe a car makes them feel. Road Movie is a group of young people, a car and a dream.

“People are going to come up to us and say, ‘did you make that film?’ and we’ll be proud to say ‘yes!”

The idea for Road Movie has come directly from the young people who we want to engage with this project. All of the group are drawn to the freedom and personal choice that having access to a car brings them. They realise that hanging out in local car parks makes them appear to be a nuisance, but they are drawn to this world and insist that most of them are innocents, who want to rid themselves of the troublemaker tags they have. In a rural area, coveted for its beauty and spectacular landscapes, their border life is ruled by their ability to ‘get about’.

The film scenario/treatment will be developed by the group of the young people through discussion, improvisation and research with director Rachel Lambert and screenwriter Peter Cox.

Production is scheduled for mid–April and will premiere at the Hay Festival 2008.

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