Mongrel Media
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Mongrel Media Presents A Ciaran Foy Film 84 min. Ireland, 2012 Languages: English www.citadelmovie.com Distribution Publicity Bonne Smith 1028 Queen Street West Star PR Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1H6 Tel: 416-488-4436 Tel: 416-516-9775 Fax: 416-516-0651 Fax: 416-488-8438 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] www.mongrelmedia.com High res stills may be downloaded from http://www.mongrelmedia.com/press.html LOGLINE They see your fear. ONE LINE SYNOPSIS An agoraphobic young father teams up with a vigilante priest to save his daughter from a gang of twisted feral children. SYNOPSIS The dilapidated suburbia of Edenstown casts a shadow over Tommy Cowley’s life. Trapped there by his agoraphobia since his wife was fatally attacked by twisted feral children, he now finds himself terrorized by the same mysterious hooded gang, who seem intent on taking his baby daughter. Torn between the help of an understanding nurse and a vigilante priest, he discovers that to be free of his fears, he must finally face the demons of his past and enter the one place that he fears the most...the abandoned tower block known as the CITADEL. DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT - Ciarán Foy I tend to describe Citadel as a half psychological horror, half autobiography. The autobiographical part stems from my own battles with agoraphobia in my late teens and early twenties, which was the result of a violent mugging I endured at the hands of a gang of youths, who threatened me with a dirty syringe held to my throat. The mugging was in fact the fourth unprovoked attack I had been a victim of. I was eighteen at the time. Following the attack I remained house bound but I didn’t have a word for the condition I was suffering with. Later that same year I got a letter to say I was accepted into The National Film School of Ireland. I needed to find a way out! Somehow I forced myself out the door and felt reasonably comfortable being outside during rush hour. Being on a packed bus or train made me feel ok. But it was when a place was quiet, or devoid of people, or dark, that the panic attacks would happen. I met my, now, wife in that first year of college and it was through her encouragement that I agreed to attend a free counseling service that the college provided. Skeptical at first, it ended up being the first step on a long, but ultimately successful, road to recovery. It also provided me with some accidental inspiration for a story! One day while discussing body language the counselor mentioned the notion that would-be assailants can sense an easy target or someone who has been a victim, “It’s almost as if they can see your fear”. I thought that was a fascinating concept. What if it was literally the case? What if someone or some-thing was essentially blind but could see fear? Someone or something that was born into fear, that thrived on it that felt the most comfortable in fearful places. I began to sketch out ideas as a way to explore my own paranoia’s and fears. A lifelong genre film fanatic I thought this would be great material for a psychological horror film. What if a gang of feral, in-bred, mutated youths were left to fend for themselves in an abandoned tower block? What if they thrived on our fears? What if an agoraphobic was trapped on a neglected abandoned council estate and these feral kids were terrorising him. I wanted to create a horror film but I also wanted it to feel ‘real’ and grounded. I envisaged a film that played out like real, believable and gritty drama, but containing all the thrills and suspense of a solid work of genre filmmaking. I wanted to capture the terror of the things I experienced and embellish them with something extra-ordinary. Hitchcock once remarked that his so- called ‘horror films’ were not horror films, but ‘terror films’. I feel the same about Citadel. I would say my main inspirations in creating Citadel were spearheaded by some of the early works of David Cronenberg, specifically films like The Brood, as well as paranoid psychological classics such as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Adrian Lyne’s Jacobs Ladder. Tone and palette-wise I have always loved the horror classics of the 70s, specifically the original The Omen and The Exorcist, as well as some of the work of Chris Cunningham, specifically his video Come to Daddy for Aphex Twin. More recently I was inspired by Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, a film which proved to me more than ever that intelligent and emotionally powerful drama can work hand in hand with pure and terrifying horror. I started writing CITADEL in 2007 and it was, at first, painful exploring such recent memories and experiences, but I felt I was onto something powerful, and persevered. I believe the best examples of genre film utilize the “extra-ordinary” to thematically explore the “ordinary”. I read once that James Cameron’s Aliens was really about “the horror of Motherhood”. If that’s the case, then I guess Citadel must be about the fear of Fatherhood. Fear and Fatherhood and self-belief were certainly themes that I wanted to explore. Tommy is a reluctant but duty-bound Father who loses his daughter through fear and finds her again through love. The Priest is a spiritual Father, albeit a faithless one who feels abandoned by a God Father. The other themes or notions I wanted to explore was the idea of self-belief. Tommy goes on the same emotional journey that takes place in my favourite Disney feature Dumbo. In fact there are a number of small hidden nods in Citadel to Dumbo! Thematically Dumbo believes he needs a magic feather to fly, not realising this is a placebo and the real ability lies within himself. If Tommy is Dumbo, Danny is the feather. With Citadel I wanted to create a fresh spin within the confines of the horror genre. Gangs of mutant youths instead of a masked killer; syringes instead of bloody knives or fanged teeth. A young working-class man on a dilapidated council estate who is struggling with his own fears, as opposed to screaming spoilt teenagers in big upper-middle class houses. I wanted to take a landscape I know so well – experiences I went through – as well as my own nightmares and paranoia’s - and exploit them for everything that terrifies me about them. Coming out of the darkness, Citadel is ultimately a story of hope. We live in uncertain and fear filled times. The fear of terrorism and its perceived likelihood to happen to any one of us and at any particular time has raised public paranoia and anxiety to record levels. These fears coupled with the fear people have of the ever-growing and serious problem of antisocial behaviour among certain ‘untouchables’ (kids aged 12-15) and the fears that many modern parents have of a corrupt world they are bringing a child into, make Citadel a very modern terror film. It is my hope that Tommy’s arc of change - from the crippling effects of terror and paranoia, to confident control and self belief- will be appealing and relevant to contemporary audiences. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION THE LOCATION Producers Katie Holly and Brian Coffey: We were drawn to Glasgow as it had key locations that we needed, particularly the Tower blocks, which we used to have in Ireland but were mostly all torn down during the ‘Celtic Tiger’. Glasgow had them in abundance, though even they are undergoing change and the locations we actually filmed inside have started to be demolished to make way for future developments. We worked with crew from both Ireland and Scotland and shot in both countries, and while this brought its own challenges, not least matching locations, exchange rate losses and trying to prep across two countries there was a great creative confluence between the crew and it was an extremely successful and rewarding partnership. Director Ciarán Foy: Prep began in Glasgow in October 2010. We had a tight budget for something so ambitious, and only 23 days scheduled to shoot it. This challenge became all the greater when Glasgow was hit by the worst winter on record. After a week of filming, the landscape became covered in a blanket of snow coupled with temperatures as low as 19 degrees (Celsius) below zero. I had to re-shoot some scenes to match the new white landscape, lost some locations as they became literally inaccessible and had to re-write certain sequences to deal with these challenges. Production, headed by Katie Holly and Brian Coffey, managed to keep the ship afloat throughout, not easy with elements like – babies, gangs of kids, SFX make-up, VFX, stunts. etc. All thrown into the mix! All the rules of low budget “do’s and don’ts” were broken and it all worked out. It was an arduous shoot to say the least but I felt inspired and excited seeing scenes and characters that existed for so long inside my head, come alive. I was also inspired by the crew, who were, each of them, a truly magnificent bunch of people to work with and I feel blessed to have had their talents supporting me. THE VISUAL STYLE In terms of visual style I was determined to conceive of something that would work for our tight schedule but also be compelling and help to further inform Tommy’s state of mind.