INTERNATIONALLY acclaimed filmmaker Terence Davies, director of Distant Voices, Still Lives and Liverpool documentary Of Time and the City, is returning to his home city this week.

He will be talking about Sunset Song, his long awaited new film (very long awaited, he’s been trying to get it off the ground since 2001) which will also receive its Liverpool premiere, at FACT prior to a national release this week.

Sunset Song sees the Kensington-born director once again team up with Liverpool movie producers Hurricane Films. Once again it is a tale of patriarchal tyranny, this time adapted from what is regarded by many as the Great Scottish Novel. 70-year-old Davies has written the screenplay to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s yarn about harsh life and doomed love on a bleak farm in the Mearns, Aberdeenshire, in the run up to World War I.

READ: Interview: Terence Davies, Back to Black

Agyness Deyn, the Rochdale-born supermodel set to feature in the new Coen brothers farce, Hail, Caesar!, takes the starring role as Chris Guthrie alongside Peter Mullan and Kevin Guthrie.

Peter Mullan in Sunset SongPeter Mullan in Sunset Song

Mullan, who starred in Trainspotting and Warhorse, is the head of an overburdened family in which only daughter Chris, commands our sympathies. To escape the harsh realities of her family life and the backbreaking toil, she seeks solace with a lover, Ewan (Guthrie, star of Sunshine on Leith). But her happiness is cut short when Ewan is conscripted into the army, and their relationship is tested just as much as Chris’s loyalty to her dysfunctional family.

The lavish cinematography is also the star here, with Michael McDonough (Winter’s Bone) shooting the windswept landscapes on 70mm film in Britain and New Zealand. 

Terence DaviesTerence Davies, taken for Liverpool Confidential by Stephanie de Leng.

A FACT spokesman said: “Davies’ previous talks at FACT have been highly entertaining, witty and insightful. His Q&A’s also have a habit of selling out, so book as early as possible to avoid disappointment,”

Expect more high profile work from Hurricane Films and the veteran director. The three amigos of Roy Boulter, Sol Papadopoulos and Davies have another work in progres, A Quiet Passion, which tells the life story of poet Emily Dickinson.

Sunset Song plus Terence Davies Q&A [15] screens Thursday 3rd December 8pm.

*Tickets, £10.50 adult and £9.00 concs available now from HERE