Private Project

Peninsula (original edit)

A story of chance, karma and retribution, inspired by the brothers Grimm fable The Two Travelling Companions.

A cautionary tale chronicling an extreme rivalry, set in a dystopian near-future.

  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Runtime:
    2 hours 2 minutes 33 seconds
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography

Tim Rolt has made films utilizing an enormous diversity of techniques and styles, combining fiction, documentary, animation and video art. His work has been seen in galleries, broadcast on television, and screened widely at film festivals throughout the world, winning several awards. Tim Rolt, originally trained at the National Film and TV School, tutored by Alexander Mackendrick and Bill Douglas, among others. Alongside his own films he has also made title sequences, pop videos, commercials and documentaries and he has worked in the UK, Europe Canada and the USA.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I decided on the location, before I had any kind of story. Bordered on three sides by sea this remote tract of land offered many different types of terrain within a very small area. Importantly it had just one building - a large corrugated iron shed - usually rented to bird watchers. This could provide a hub, serving both as accommodation for cast and crew, whilst also potentially doubling as a principal location. This landscape and all its possibilities really inspired and shaped the film.

Allowing the actors and the landscape to contribute to the forging of the film was always my intention. Intuition, risk and the unknown were also key elements in the making of the film. Finding a benefit in what we didn’t have was an abiding principal for a project undertaken with extremely limited resources. An outline story, taking inspiration from the brothers Grimm tale The Two Travelling Companions was developed as a starting point. Dialogue and mise en scene, was worked out with the cast on location. Having a small cast and crew and all locations limited to a mile radius of our base meant we were able to maximize shooting time. I reflect how different the story might have been had we suffered heavy rain during the shoot; as it was we were blessed with mostly dry conditions so the full potential of the landscape played out for the camera.

This unusual production method meant that the editing became very much also a writing process. I have always tried to make films that are open to being interpreted in more than one way and I believe, for the audience too, the viewing experience should be a creative act. For me now to direct attention to certain themes, risks reducing the film’s potential for expression. The meaning of the film for me is going to be different to someone else.

In an ever more mediated world, this freedom – the audience’s freedom - is worth safeguarding.

I look back on how highly immersive our time on the peninsula was and I offer thanks to my intrepid and loyal band of collaborators. For me, that brief time has now taken on the qualities of a strangely vivid dream, and one that, I very much hope, is mirrored in the finished film.