Bait director Mark Jenkin is preparing his next… | Little White Lies

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Bait direc­tor Mark Jenkin is prepar­ing his next feature

17 Jan 2020

Words by Charles Bramesco

Man with old-fashioned camera capturing photograph, black and white image.
Man with old-fashioned camera capturing photograph, black and white image.
Enys Men is being billed as an eco-soph­i­cal hor­ror”, and begins shoot­ing in Corn­wall in May.

While still large­ly unknown across the Atlantic, direc­tor Mark Jenkin was one of the break­out stars in the UK last year. His debut fea­ture film, Bait, a look into the lives of Cor­nish fish­er­men ren­dered in gor­geous 16mm black-and-white, earned him two BAF­TA nom­i­na­tions and announced him as a name to watch.

We wouldn’t have to watch long, it turns out, as today brings the news that Jenkin has already made inroads on his fol­low-up. Vari­ety reports that Jenkin has entered pre­pro­duc­tion on Enys Men in coop­er­a­tion with Film4, with plans to direct from an orig­i­nal script.

The details remain hazy, but here are a cou­ple of tan­ta­liz­ing tid­bits: the film will take place on a mys­te­ri­ous island crossed by ley lines and time­lines,” and fall under the new­ly cre­at­ed micro­genre of eco-soph­i­cal hor­ror.” The osten­si­ble com­bi­na­tion of eco­log­i­cal hor­ror and phi­los­o­phy will be vis­it­ed upon a woman haunt­ed by echoes of both the past and future.”

The film is set to start shoot­ing in the Corn­wall area this May, cuing up a time­line that like­ly leads to return to the Berli­nale in 2021, the same fes­ti­val that launched Bait in 2019.

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