PREMIOS Y FESTIVALES

- Festival Sundance 2015: Premio del público

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INFORMACIÓN EXCLUSIVA

    This film started life with a chance visit to the Boxing Day races in 2012. It was a freezing December day, the place was packed with punters and food stalls and bookies and in the middle of this travelling carnival were these incredible looking horses: sleek, muscled, wired-looking. The recession had kicked in not long before but at the track that day - and all over the country - people were spending cash they didn’t have, to back one of those beautiful animals.
  I knew nothing about racing or horses but the idea of a film set in that world intrigued me. Days of research later, looking for something though I wasn’t quite sure what, I came across this story and knew within seconds I would do anything to make it into a film.
  It was funny and moving, full of life and life-affirming with big universal themes and a great dramatic sweep and shape to the story. It was also a wonderful mash of film genres, part classic British Billy Elliot/Full Monty underdog tale, part Lavender Hill Mob Ealing Comedy caper, plus of course Rocky… with a horse.
  Too scared to make the first call - I couldn’t face hearing a ‘no’ or worse still failing to persuade them - I phoned Judith Dawson, the producer, who also happens to be the best cold-caller I know. I said you HAVE to make this work or we’re both going to regret it forever. (She responds well to pressure…)
  That was the start of our journey with the characters at the heart of the film. Meeting Jan and Brian, Howard and Angela, Tony, Maureen, the film we thought we had just got better and better. It was about so much more than racing. They were wonderful storytellers who were able to convey in a very true and funny and moving way, how much the journey with Dream meant to each of them. It was something they all needed at some level. It was something very personal.
  That was especially true for Jan, the barmaid who began it all. She led a tough life, working long hours behind the bar and as a cleaner and she did that in large part to afford her other life with her show whippets and racing pigeons and then with Dream.
That life with her animals, as a breeder, was the life that gave her a sense of release and freedom. It allowed her to be the person she once dreamt she could be.
  In many ways Jan was a sort of pied piper for the project, one by one persuading her friends and then her village to get behind her outlandish plan. Where most of us might look forward and see the obstacles or the snobbery or the doors locked shut, Jan sees only intriguing challenges and the opportunity to stir the pot a bit. She is quite fearless.
  For that reason, one of the most touching things about the story is that it comes full circle. At the end of the film the characters are in the same jobs, the same lives, Jan is still cleaning the tills at Asda; they are no richer materially but they are richer in every other way.
  Our characters were a gift, but bringing their story to life was an adventure all of its own.
All that remained of the story was a few snatched pieces of home movie, some newspaper cuttings and a handful of photographs. Plus our central character was a horse – a non-speaking star in the central role. We knew we needed some level of dramatization and the minute we met Dream we knew the solution was simply for Dream to play himself. Though I don’t have much to compare this to, he seemed very charismatic - if a little enigmatic - and he proved the perfect, patient gentleman during filming.
  The other central element of the film was the setting: Cefn Fforest and the valleys of South Wales. Coal mining had been at the heart of the valleys for generations. When the pits closed it changed life beyond recognition. Unemployment is now higher here tan almost anywhere in Britain. Dream Alliance had – in his own quiet way – given a lot to Cefn Fforest. The clubs filled up again, people were proud that one of their own was doing good and putting the place back on the map. 
  We asked the village to help us recreate those days and they couldn’t have been more hospitable or welcoming. No professional extras were used. They are all locals - people and animals - and they made the film possible.
  What I hope people will take from DARK HORSE is this: your circumstances, however tough or bleak, do not define you. What you do is who you are.