Celebrated actors Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn will be back in the North East in November for a special screening of their eagerly awaited new film Dragonfly at the Tyneside Cinema.
It will be a homecoming for the former, who hails from the North East, and a home-from-homecoming for the latter who will be forever Vera in many people’s eyes.
Also present for a post-screening question and answer session will be the film’s director, Paul Andrew Williams.
In Dragonfly – described by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian as “a haunted, social-realist thriller” - Brenda Blethyn plays Elsie, a lonely pensioner whose life is transformed when she acquires a new neighbour, the younger Colleen (Riseborough), who begins to care for her.
Actually, she acquires two new neighbours since Colleen is accompanied by her dog, Sabre, who appears to be everything a poodle is not.
As the women’s “unlikely friendship” develops”, say the Tyneside, “simmering tensions with Elsie’s son John (Jason Watkins) bring shocking consequences in a story that explores loneliness, connection and consequence in contemporary Britain”.
Paul Andrew Williams put his name in lights back in 2006 with London to Brighton, a dark gangland thriller, and has been credited as director and writer on several films since then, including Song for Marion which stars Gemma Arterton, Christopher Eccleston and Vanessa Redgrave and was shot largely in the North East.
He also directed several episodes of the TV series Broadchurch.
Dragonfly, on which he is credited as director, writer and producer, was described by Peter Bradshaw, after a screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York, as “a stark, fierce, wonderfully acted film”.
You would expect nothing less. Brenda Blethyn had a long list of credits even before playing Vera, TV’s rumpled North East crimefighter, and has an impressive array of awards.
Andrea Riseborough is a brilliantly enigmatic and versatile actor who is impossible to pigeonhole.
She was a member of the People’s Theatre youth group in Newcastle for five years before going off to RADA and embarking on a starry screen career which has seen her portray Margaret Thatcher, Mrs Wallis Simpson and Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana.
Three years ago she was Oscar-nominated for her leading role in To Leslie.
The Dragonfly screening and Q&A are on Tuesday, November 4 (7pm). Book tickets from the Tyneside Cinema website.