Dossier De Presse - Persmap Colin Firth Stanley Tucci Synopsis Supernova
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DOSSIER DE PRESSE - PERSMAP COLIN FIRTH STANLEY TUCCI SYNOPSIS SUPERNOVA Sam et Tusker sont en couple depuis 20 ans. Ils décident d'entreprendre un voyage en UN FILM DE HARRY MACQUEEN camping car dans l'Angleterre rurale pour rendre visite à leurs proches et retourner sur les lieux de leur passé. Depuis que Tusker est atteint de syndrome démentiel, le temps qu'ils passent ensemble est la chose la plus importante qu'ils aient. Drame - 2020 - UK - 94 min. Info & Matériel : www.cineart.be Distribution: Contact: Cinéart Heidi Vermander Rue de Namur, 72-74 T. 0475 62 10 13 1000 Brussel [email protected] T 02 245 87 00 DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT – one that still rages to this day in many countries around the world. Supernova is the result of a lengthy and immersive research process. Over a three-year period, I worked closely with the UK’s leading dementia specialists at UCL and The Wellcome Trust and collaborated with many individuals and families affected by the condition. I have spent time with people who have since died both from dementia and suicide – in secret and in public - and seen the fallout from that first-hand. It has been one of the most profound and important experiences of my life. The In 2015, two events happened characters and themes in around me almost simultaneously: Supernova reflect my attempt to in February a colleague, who had do these people and their stories become distant and increasingly justice in a truthful and original bad at her job, was fired from our manner – to place a selfless, loving place of work – in six months she relationship in the context of an would be dead. A few days later a immediate future that hangs in the close friend was forced to put her balance. From the outset my desire father in a care home – he had just was to make an empowering, turned 60. powerful, challenging and timely film about what we are willing to A short time after this I saw a do for the people that we love. documentary that moved me like nothing had before. It followed Supernova is a romantic, original, a 65-year-old British man to the modern love-story. It is an Dignitas clinic in Switzerland intimate, self-contained tale that where, in the company of his wife investigates some of the biggest of 40 years, he legally took his human questions of all: how we own life. live and love and laugh, even as we near the end of our time. The man in the documentary, my colleague, and my friend’s father – Harry Macqueen all had versions of young-onset Dementia that had played out in very different ways. These experiences made me want to find out more about this disorder specifically, as well as the vital debate around end of life choices DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT “ SUPERNOVA is a romantic, original, modern love-story. It is an intimate, self-contained tale that investigates some of the biggest human questions of all: how we live and love and laugh, even as we near the end of our time.” – Harry Macqueen SUPERNOVA Developing the Script It was a chance meeting with Around the same time, Macqueen had released Macqueen’s debut an old colleague that set writer/ had been counselling a friend directorial feature Hinterland. director Harry Macqueen on whose father had just entered Their relationship remained close, the path to what would become a care home before his 60th and one day she received a two- Supernova. She had been an birthday, also diagnosed with page idea for Supernova through outgoing, gregarious personality young-onset dementia. “As a Macqueen’s agent. “It resonated when they first met, but over the human rather than a filmmaker, with me,” Morgan recalls, “Just year they worked together, she both of those experiences made Harry’s vision for it, and the had become withdrawn, angry me want to learn a lot more about subject matter.” and difficult to be around. She how it affects people,” Macqueen was dismissed from her job, and says. “I was deeply moved by those Knowing much of the film’s Macqueen thought little more experiences, and I was also very success would be down to of it until he met her again in interested in end-of-life choices the actors cast as Sam and the high street, being pushed in and what rights are afforded to us Tusker, Morgan brought it to a wheelchair by her husband. “I at the end of our lives. It was the producer Tristan Goligher, a found out subsequently she had meshing of those two things that well-established producer with young-onset dementia,” Macqueen really was the seed from which The Bureau with whom she had recalls. “I realised I had been Supernova grew.” collaborated over the years, and watching her life unravel because Producer Emily Morgan had whose experience working with of this condition for the best part first met Macqueen when she directors such as Andrew Haigh of a year, although I didn’t know was working in-house at Soda seemed to lend itself naturally to what it was.” Pictures, the distributor that the environment she wanted to create for Macqueen. DEVELOPING THE SCRIPT “The film simply couldn’t have to learn about the medical and a young-onset type of dementia happened without Emily and biological intricacies of the many where people experience a Tristan,” Macqueen says. “It’s kinds of dementia. He was also progressive decline in vision and/ their film as much as mine, and afforded an opportunity to spend or literacy skills, but often preserve we worked really well together time with people dealing with their memory in early stages. as a team. The level of trust and dementia, as well as those who had Outwardly, Tusker’s life seems openness about the project was lost loved ones to the condition. “It pretty normal most of the time, key to making it what it was. Their became one of the most inspiring but inwardly he’s being slowly knowledge of how to navigate and life-changing experiences I’ve and absolutely unravelled by his everything – from development to ever had,” Macqueen says. condition.” funding to organising the shoot itself – is the single reason the film He was especially surprised This level of specificity was one exists at all.” to learn just how widespread felt urgently by Macqueen as he As they started to think about dementia is, and how many came to know more people living how to turn Macqueen’s two- people were willing to share with dementia. “When you’re pager into a viable draft, Morgan their experiences of living with dealing with something so deeply and Macqueen received some it. “Dementia is a very broad, felt, and with a condition that initial funding from the Wellcome umbrella term for a lot of different changes so many people’s lives Trust. “They were a big support conditions,” Macqueen explains. in the way dementia does, it’s a to write a first draft of the script,” “It kills more people in this country moral imperative to do it right,” he Morgan notes. Further funding than anything else; that’s the first insists. “I promised myself that I was provided when Morgan won thing. But also, we know so little would honour the people that had the BFI Vision Award and was about it. And especially when it given me their time by making, afforded the opportunity to launch comes to young-onset dementias, hopefully, the most authentic story her own production company, there’s a lot we don’t know. We are I could.” Quiddity Films, and develop a learning new things about these slate of productions. conditions on a monthly basis.” Goligher believes Macqueen captured Sam and Tusker’s fight The Wellcome Trust, a charity He also came to understand that with dementia from the first dedicated to supporting science the perception of dementia, as draft onwards. “There was a real and research in the fields of being a condition characterised emotional intelligence and subtlety biomedical research and medical solely by memory loss, was to the script,” he recalls. “It was humanities, offered Macqueen inaccurate. “Ultimately, if you dealing with a really pertinent guidance as he learned more have any type of dementia, at any issue in a way that was full of the about the effect of a young-onset age, it will eventually end up with passion with which Harry came to dementia diagnosis. For several Alzheimer’s, which involves total understand these subjects.” years the organisation has invested memory loss, but actually a lot of money and knowledge into the different types of dementia For Morgan, the project took on developing film and television have nothing to do with memory added personal resonance when projects, and the doors it opened for a long time.” her mother – a GP who she had up proved extremely fruitful as the consulted in the earliest days of story took shape. Through this process, Macqueen development for her experience zeroed in on the exact condition with dementia patients – was Through the Wellcome Trust, Tusker would be experiencing, herself diagnosed with brain Macqueen visited the Dementia and where we would meet him on cancer. “She was giving advice Research Centre at University his journey. “He has what’s called at the beginning of the project College London and worked with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, or and then she developed similar Dr. Sebastian Crutch and his team PCA,” Macqueen says. “That’s symptoms herself,” Morgan relates.