LADY MACBETH

Rural England, 1865. Katherine (Florence Pugh) is stifled by her loveless marriage to a bitter man twice her age, whose family are cold and unforgiving. When she embarks on a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, a force is unleashed inside her, so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

“When preparing to direct Lady Macbeth it was important for me to continue to put the actors and script at the center of the film. As a theater director I approach each project with respect for the writer and the script – it is quite common for the writer to be present throughout the rehearsal period and my main job is to help the actors to understand how best to realise the intentions of the writer. Even though the “authorship” of a film is rebalanced in favor of the director I thought it would be foolish to abandon this practise when I had a script as good as the the one Alice Birch had written for Lady Macbeth. I had also asked for ten days of rehearsal before we started shooting which enabled me to give the actors as much information as possible before the shoot started. This allowed us to shoot faster on the day because we had already established the main objectives for each character and I could let them get on with it while I worked out where to put the camera. Collaboration is also a very important element of my work in theater and I’m glad that I was able to fully collaborate in the same way with everyone on this film.“

William Oldroyd for FilmmakerMagazine.com