It is often seen as the backdrop to kitchen-sink dramas and gritty series about working-class communities, but a new film hopes to showcase a different version of north-east England.
Jackdaw, an action thriller coming to cinemas on Friday, pushes the envelope of what’s been possible stylistically and tonally in the region, according to its writer and director.
“I wanted to give the north-east a Hollywood edge,” Jamie Childs said. “I’ve tried to showcase the region, and bring a slightly more glamorous aesthetic than what you’d be used to with a gritty British crime thriller.
“Hopefully, it will inspire other film-makers to go to that region and make stuff there. This was as important as getting the film made to me, I want to help build a film industry in the north-east.”
The chase thriller follows Jack Dawson, aka Jackdaw, a former motocross champion and army veteran who returns home to look after his brother. But when he takes on a final job for a local criminal, he gets double-crossed and his brother is kidnapped. The rest of the film is a “violent night-time odyssey through England’s northern rust belt”.
Scenes are set and shot in Hartlepool and Tees Valley, around sites including Seal Sands, Nunthorpe, Redcar and the North Sea – bringing to life the region’s breathtaking coastlines and dramatic industrial landscapes.
The film, which stars Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jenna Coleman and Thomas Turgoose, is Child’s feature debut, following his work on episodes of Doctor Who, the Sandman, and His Dark Materials. Having grown up in County Durham, the director said he recognised the importance of seeing his home properly represented on the big screen.
“I didn’t think you could make films in the north-east when I was a kid growing up. It seemed so far away from where I lived. And then they shot Billy Elliot in my village and I thought, wow, I can shoot stuff on my doorstep.”
The film is the first to be part-financed by North East Screen Industries Partnership, which was set up to attract film and television projects to the region. It also utilised the Northern Film and TV Studios, the north-east’s only large-scale film and TV production facility, and all of the crew were hired locally.
The soundtrack includes a new, exclusive track from north-east star Sam Fender, while the film had its UK premiere in Stockton on Wednesday night.
But, despite being rooted in the region, Childs said there was a universality to the film. “It’s supposed to feel placeless and timeless,” he said. “I tried to play with the tropes of American genre thrillers from the 90s and turn them on their head.
“We wanted to make something a little bit fun and pulpy, something that didn’t take itself too seriously. It’s sort of a playful pastiche of those films set in rust-belt towns like Detroit. I thought, you never see that in the UK, we should do that over here.”
He pointed out that Ridley Scott lived in north-east England when he was younger, and has said the landscape inspired the view of Los Angeles in the first Bladerunner film.
“That area around Middlesbrough and Seal Sands, it’s like an ocean of oil refineries around there,” Childs said. “It’s amazing driving there at night, it’s so atmospheric. They have these flare stacks, which are chimneys that spew out big fireballs of gas.”
It wasn’t easy filming around the oil refineries, he added. “But one of the great things about filming in the north-east is the community atmosphere. Everyone wants to help get the film made. The guys who owned all the factories let us use their private roads to film our car chase scenes.”
And while the plot of the film might seem a little far-fetched, Childs said “everything in it is based off true anecdotes and things connected to myself … I had a wacky childhood, let’s put it that way”.
