| The Ceremony | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jack King |
| Story by | Jack King |
| Produced by | Hollie Bryan |
Running time | 91 minutes |
| Country | England |
| Language |
|
| Budget | £120,000 [1] |
The Ceremony is a 2024 British drama film written and directed by Jack King. The film was filmed and set in Bradford and the Yorkshire Dales, and involves migrant workers attempting to dispose of a body in the hills of North Yorkshire. The film won the Sean Connery Award for Feature Filmmaking Excellence at the 2024 Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Several migrants workers are employed in a car wash in Bradford, West Yorkshire. They are a mixture of Romanian, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish immigrants who have trouble understanding each other because of culture and language. A customer accuses one of the workers of stealing his Rolex watch from the glove compartment which leads to a death of one of the workers. Not wishing to get the police involved, the boss orders two of the other workers to take the body into the hills and bury it. [2]
The film was shot over twelve "frigid" days in January 2023 in Yorkshire; Bradford for the car wash scenes, and Kettlewell in Upper Wharfedale for the Yorkshire Dales scenes. [1] The film was co-produced as part of the Bradford UK City of Culture 2025, and was supported by National Science and Media Museum, the BFI, and the the National Lottery. [4]
Sam Cooney, writing in the RAF News, gave the film four roundels out of five and said that the film is "beautifully photographed in striking black-and-white, and punctuated with numerous (perhaps too many) close-up detail shots, the film mixes a grounded realism with moments that tip into the surreal." [5] Cath Clarke writing in the Guardian awarded the film three stars out of five, and also highlighted the film's tonal quality; "In the stark monochrome photography, the landscape is menacing and hostile. The camera often lingers on the men’s faces, like portrait photography... there’s one dream sequence too many and far too much screen time given to a ram, as magnificent as he is. It’s a slightly unsatisfactory conclusion to an impressive film." [6]
The film won the inaugural Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024. [7] The director was given a prize of £50,000. [8] [9] The film also received two nominations at the British Independent Film Awards in 2024. [10]