A Film by Academy Award� Winning Director Andrea Arnold

This is a strange world. We’re been told that feelings are part of the human nature that one doesn’t supposed to show, unless of course, are the positive and nice ones. What happend then when in the middle of the night we have this inevitable necessity of wrong doing? a craving for revenge, where Jackie (Kate Dickie) the main character of Andrea Arnold film “Red Road” triggers somewhere deep inside her head after seeing somebody that she wants to forget.

Red Road is an intense suspensful thriller, beautifuly crafted that traps the audience from the very begining. Working as an employee of the Eye City Surveillance System. in a middle class Glasgow neiborhood Jackie is a silent witness where she play a god-like role as she is the unseen entity through the surveillance security cameras. Behind the safety of a distant lens, she keeps the police informed about potential danger on those sordid streets. A sad low-waged vigilante trying to prevent danger or to avoid suffering: that is how Jackie sees the world. Away, distant and alone.

The imminent, yet inexplicable and almost complusive necessity of walking down the streets looking for that “someone” she saw on her computer screen it’s at some point bizarre and paranoid. We don’t have the motive yet, the “why” remain uncertain. The character then enters the life of a just released criminal named Clyde (Tony Curran). Clyde lives with a couple of roomates in a small, ugly apartment in a top floor of the Red Road buidling: Stevie (Martin Compson) and April (Nathalie Press)

The film presents a strong sex secuence that might look more suitable for a porn movie but still delivers the director’s intentions to portrait the crudeness of an evil mind in action, with a sick twist that I won’t spoil for the sake of the film. The background music playing a darkish atmosphere plagued with intense textures intesifies the drama more than the typical music score and emphasizes more on the main character feelings and obscure desires than on the screen actions. Red Road it’s not just the monstrous building that surrounds the whole story but the redemption symbol where Jackie has to venture to seeking for answers to her empty life.

The director’s choice of maintaining the truth unveiled until the last 8 minutes of the film seems odd but at the same time gives the character a powerful role of a dark unpredicatable being supported with excellent performances. This give the audience enough reason to stick to their seats until the very end if they want to understand Jackie’s pain and grief. In order to release their demons one have to go to hell and live there for a while and this is a great example of human nature and how we respond to emotions in real life.

Josue Meneses

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Tartan Films USA will theatrically release RED ROAD on April 6 in New York City and on April 13 in Los Angeles and Orange County as well as other cities nationwide. An atmospheric and intense thriller about pain and retribution which finds Jackie, a Glasgow CCTV (surveillance) operator watching over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze. One day a man appears on her monitor, a man she thought she would never see again, a man she never wanted to see again. Now she has no choice, she is compelled to confront him.

RED ROAD is the first film to be produced under the Advance Party Concept. Advance Party involves three directors developing scripts around the same group of characters. The films take place in Scotland but apart from that the writers are free to place the characters anywhere according to geography, social setting or ethnic background. The characters back-stories can be expanded, family relations can be created between them, they can be given habits good or bad, and secondary characters can be added if it is proper for the individual film. All of the characters must appear in all of the films. The various parts will be cast with the same actors in the same parts in all of the films. Advance Party is the Dogme-inflected brainchild of Lone Scherfig and Anders Thomas Jensen, employees of Danish co-producer Zentropa.

RED ROAD stars Kate Dickie (”Tinsel Town” BAFTA Award Winner for Best Performance (Scotland), Tony Curran (THE GOOD GERMAN), Martin Compton (Ken Loach’s SWEET SIXTEEN, A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS) and Natalie Press (MY SUMMER OF LOVE).RED ROAD is a production of the UK FILM COUNCIL SCOTTISH SCREEN, GLASGOW FILM OFFICE and BBC FILMS in association with ZOMA FILMS and VERVE PICTURES, SIGMA FILMS/ZENTROPA ENTERTAINMENTS 5

RED ROAD is director Andrea Arnold’s feature film debut. Her shorts”Milk” (1998) and “Dog” (2001) were selected for competition in Cannes (International Critics Week) and “Wasp,” (2003) which won the Academy Award for Live Action Short in 2005 was described by the Guardian as ’social realist film poetry.’ The film won an additional 37 international awards and garnered Arnold the attention of the Advance Party.
Scotland, 2006, 113 min, 35 mm, colour, 1:1.85, stereo

Awards & Film Festivals

Awards
2006 Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Winner 2006 Scottish BAFTA Award Winner: Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress, & Screenplay.

Film Festivals

RED ROAD was an official selection of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival (where the film won the Grand Jury Prize), the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, among many others.
Theatrical Release Dates

NEW YORK

April 6th at the Sunshine Theatres and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York. It will also be playing at The George Eastman House Theatres.

LOS ANGELES
April 13th at the Nuart in West Los Angeles for a two week exclusive engagement before opening wider in the Los Angeles area.

Critics Quotes

Film Comment’s 7th Annual Critic’s Poll of “The Best Undistributed Films of 2006″

The modern paranoia and contemporary sexual violence that grows from Arnold’s unflinching film (and Kate Dickie’s intent, sere performance as the troubled, vengeful woman) are nightmarish yet haunting.

- Ray Pride, New City Chicago

“…sheer cinematic poetry — profound optimism about human nature”

– Amy Dawtrey, Variety

“In a triumph of filmmaking, Arnold has endowed a tale of female rage with disquieting social resonance… haunting, brainy, spare–and it’s also topical, tapping into the paranoia induced by increasing surveillance, whether by phone/wire-tapping or, as in Red Road, CCTV. At the same time, Arnold stirs into the mix a provocative view of female sexuality that’s likely to rile the p.c police.”
– Erica Abeel, Film Journal

Four Stars. “A slow-burning but enticing thriller, it captures its working class Glaswegian setting in absorbing detail — the film’s vivid, rarely-eroticised depiction of female sexuality and strength should hook fans of films like Morvern Callar, and its subtle suspense will keep audiences of all kinds involved.”
– Anna Smith, Empire

“raw, shivering sexuality and fever-pitch emotion”

– James Rocchi, Cinematical

About Tartan Films:

Hamish McAlpine, the founder and owner of Tartan Films, celebrating twenty one years of distributing films in the UK), launched Tartan USA in 2004 with an eclectic and controversial slate of films from established auteurs and up-and-coming filmmakers. Previous Tartan film releases include 2004 Cannes Grand Jury Prize Winner OLDBOY, the critically-acclaimed Romanian Oscar entry THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU and the final film in Park Chanwook’s “Vengeance Trilogy,” LADY VENGEANCE. In Fall 2006 Tartan released THE CAVE OF THE YELLOW DOG, from the director of THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL.

Upcoming theatrical releases include 2005 Cannes Jury Prize Winner, Andrea Arnold’s RED ROAD, cutting edge Hong Kong helmer Johnnie To’s TRIAD ELECTION and Danish, Director Anders Morgenthaler’s half-animated/half-live-action PRINCESS.