The highly anticipated psychological thriller Reawakening is set to hit cinemas this week, and what makes it even more special is that it was filmed entirely in Harrow.
Directed by BAFTA-nominated Virginia Gilbert, the film tells the gripping tale of a family shattered by the mysterious return of their daughter after a decade-long disappearance. With a stellar cast including Jared Harris, Juliet Stevenson, and Erin Doherty, Reawakening promises to be a tense and emotional ride.
Gilbert, who grew up in Harrow, not only chose her hometown as the setting but also infused the film with personal experiences, ensuring authenticity at every level. In an exclusive interview, Virginia Gilbert opens up to Harrow Online about the inspiration behind the film, the challenges faced during production, and what it was like working with an all-star cast. Here is the interview in full.
What inspired you to make the film and how did the idea come about?
Reawakening is the tale of an ordinary couple who have had to face the unthinkable – the loss of their child with no answers as to her fate. Every parent’s worst nightmare. The story asks us to consider how we might deal with deep emotional pain. What does it take to keep facing the world? To be forced to go on with the hope that your child might, just maybe, come home? And then to face reality when, one day, she does…
I’d had the initial idea for the story years ago, but it was no more than a premise at that stage: a lost daughter returns after a long disappearance and the parents have wildly different reactions. It was an idea I put into a drawer as I got busy with other projects, and then life happened to me. My mother died unexpectedly after a short illness, and I became a mother myself the following year. The transformation of my life and self was, I suspect, what drew me back to this material, though it didn’t happen immediately. When lockdown happened, the idea began to call to me in a way I haven’t experienced before. I wrote it very fast, almost in some sort of fever-dream (and possibly to avoid home-schooling my 5-year-old), but it was one of those rare and miraculous experiences where the story came out more or less fully formed. I suppose I could finally write it because there was something I needed to say.
‘Reawakening’ is a psychological thriller set in Harrow. What inspired you to choose Harrow as a filming location and how did its setting influence the story’s atmosphere?
The setting of suburban, busy Harrow is a vital part of the film for me. The film is very much the story of an ordinary couple to whom something extraordinary happens. It was always a suburban story and seemed obvious to me that, rather than scouting an area of London I didn’t know to find all the locations, I could and should set it in Harrow, where I was born and raised (and live).
Harrow is hugely popular as a filming location, but mainly for the glorious bits of the hill and school – I wanted to show a side of the town that isn’t often portrayed on screen. I know Harrow inside out, the texture and feel of the place, and setting it here, in such familiar surroundings, made a huge difference to me psychologically. I knew the film had to be rooted in reality – every logical question has to be answered in the storyline (I can’t bear films where implausible things happen for the sake of plot!) and that mattered as much to me in the setting as in the script. Being able to use locations that are real, lived in, full of the texture of life and, indeed, my own experiences of them; being able to involve friends, acquaintances (shooting in my local café, shooting at my children’s school, etc.) all made a huge difference in how I rooted the story. Shooting here also meant I could walk to work most mornings, which was lovely!
And we had the benefit of shooting in the summer of 2022 with the intense heatwave – I love that Harrow is bathed in golden sunlight in the film, rather than a grey bleakness often associated with urban stories – I couldn’t have wished for more. I challenge Harrow residents to play location bingo – how many different Harrow (and Pinner) places can you find?!
The film centres on a family dealing with the mysterious return of their daughter after a decade. How did you approach directing such an emotionally intense storyline?
Practically speaking, I love taking off the writer’s hat and putting the director’s hat on. It’s an entirely different job, and a new voyage of discovery begins. The writing has usually come from a fairly instinctive place (albeit with crafting during the revisions process), so once it’s time to begin my preparation as a director, I find I’m discovering things I had no idea were in there and asking a million questions I don’t immediately know the answer to. It’s a very detailed, demanding, and enriching process – finding layers of meaning and symbols in the script that I wasn’t conscious of when I was writing.
It’s one of the parts of the filmmaking process that I enjoy the most, mining the script for its layers, its meaning, its thematic unity, and thinking of visual means of expression that enhance the story without drawing overt attention to themselves. With subject matter such as this, paradoxically, I find it very joyful. Most of us have had some experience of loss, and being able to discuss it with cast and colleagues, delve deep into such transformative experiences is actually very life-enhancing. There was a great deal of joy in making this film, and the real fun begins when those discussions start happening with the actors.
Jared Harris and Juliet Stevenson lead the cast in ‘Reawakening’. What was it like working with such seasoned actors and how did they bring their characters to life?
When it came to casting, you have a wish list of actors. It’s very, very rare that your wish list comes true. But on this production, I think the gods of film were smiling on us. Erin Doherty came on board quite early, and I was thrilled. She was my first choice for Clare, having hugely admired her work in both The Crown and Chloe. I had wanted to work with Juliet Stevenson for years, and I couldn’t have been more overjoyed when she agreed to play Mary. She’s one of our great actors, and I knew she would bring total depth and rootedness to a psychologically complex and challenging role.
I’ve admired Jared Harris’s work for many, many years. He, too, is one of our greats – a true chameleon in the sense that every single character he’s ever played is utterly three-dimensional, and he manages to completely disappear within a role. I wanted to see him play a character like John, a sort of everyman. Initially, we didn’t think the dates would work with him, but by some miracle, we discovered that he was likely to be technically free. So, with bated breath and the clock ticking for our summer window of shooting, we sent him the script. He read very fast, and we spoke on the phone, and after our conversation, he agreed to play the part.
It was one of those extraordinary situations where three of the most superb actors came on and elevated this story in a way I could only have dreamed of. I think their outstanding performances in the film speak for themselves.
In an ideal world, you have the budget and the time to have a proper rehearsal period. The reality is that, certainly on independent features, that almost never happens. But we were very lucky. I managed to get the actors together on Zoom before the shoot started so that we could initially meet, and the actors were incredibly generous with their time. I had a lot of individual meetings with them and conversations. We did manage to get a day all together the day before we started shooting, which was incredibly valuable because it was an opportunity to discuss all the backstories, questions, and the texture of these characters rather than rehearsing specific scenes.
Filming was completed in 2022, and the movie is now set for its UK-Ireland release. Were there any unique challenges or surprises during the production process?
I don’t know if you’ve ever stood in a small garage with a corrugated iron roof, tented out with heavy black material (so we could film day for night), with portable air conditioners that no one had thought to position correctly so that the hot air is flowing back into the room; a lighting rig, camera, multiple crew, while it hits 40 degrees outside… Let’s just say, the crew kept multiple cans of deodorant to hand throughout the shoot. Jared was the true hero of the particular day described, as for numerous set-ups, he was wearing a fleece…
Overall, the shoot was an intense experience – partly because of the extreme heat, which did not abate at all for the duration, and partly because of the challenges of shooting a feature in 23 days. Add the COVID situation into the equation – we were one of the first shoots to happen just after the government insurance scheme for COVID and filming had ended – so we were all following strict COVID protocols and somewhat paranoid about getting ill as we couldn’t afford to stop production. Yet production did have to shut down, as, despite every possible precaution, Jared contracted COVID. That meant a frantic revising of the schedule, rethinking the shooting of a major scene (I’d had one day allocated to shoot it originally: I was left with 3 hours and 2 cameras to get it done in the end); me shooting certain scenes with Juliet and Erin and a stand-in (hopefully you won’t be able to tell which scenes and whose back isn’t Jared’s!), and being reliant on the generosity of the crew and other actors to make up the time, which they did.
We had numerous other challenges and ups and downs, but that could be a separate article in itself!
Were there any particular landmarks or areas in Harrow that played a significant role in the film? What are people likely to recognise if you can tell us?
I would very much like residents to play location bingo when they see the film! Although hopefully, people will be too immersed in the story to be paying attention to too many backgrounds… But much of the town centre features – St George’s Centre and St Anne’s precinct, the wonderful Ancona café for a major scene (big shout-out to the fabulous Flora who put up with me not only filming in there but writing in there for hours at a time over the years), Panda’s Kitchen restaurant, Visage hairdressers, St Jerome’s Bilingual Church of England Primary School, Norbury school. Some scenes also took place in Pinner, and one of the main location ‘characters’, John and Mary’s house, belongs to lovely friends of mine near Headstone Manor, who had literally just moved in and very kindly moved out for the duration of the shoot, letting us have our way with their brand-new property!
I hope Harrow residents will enjoy this story set in our town. I’m thrilled that Reawakening is coming to cinemas – most especially the Harrow Vue! I think the film has the power to touch a wide range of people, as age has no bearing on experience, and the film has themes that many can relate to. Ultimately, it’s a profoundly hopeful film, even in the face of tragedy and loss. I hope the audience will feel that sense of strength and the leaps of faith we make to deepen us and give our lives meaning. I also hope that it’s a compelling and entertaining story – it is, after all, a film about grief masquerading as a thriller. I’ve always believed that art shouldn’t preach; it should draw us in and quietly illuminate. I hope people feel that ninety minutes in the company of this story is ninety minutes well-spent.
Reawakening opens in cinemas this Friday, September 13th. Tickets for the film at Harrow Vue are now available here: https://www.myvue.com/film/reawakening
Chris Mitchell is the founder and editor of Harrow Online, Harrow’s leading local news platform.
He launched Harrow Online in 2010 as a Facebook page sharing local news and information. Since then, it has grown into a trusted source for breaking news, crime, council decisions, planning, transport, business and community stories across the borough.
Harrow Online reaches hundreds of thousands of readers each month and has a social media audience of more than 200,000 followers.
For news tips, press releases or enquiries, contact Chris at info@harrowonline.org.
