Ben Wheatley is an English filmmaker who started in shorts, sketch, viral videos and animation, before transitioning to make four distinctly English, variably horrific features: Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers and A Field in England. Expertly weaving seemingly disparate genres, Wheatley’s films have a visceral immediacy that sometimes belies their formal complexity.
With his latest feature, A Field in England, film form comes to the fore. The would be midnight movie about a motley crew traversing the English Civil War was shot in black and white with a variety of (sometimes unique) lenses and includes a psychedelic freakout.
It was our great pleasure to have Ben join us again at our OCAD U studio space during the Toronto International Film Festival. We had the chance to discuss A Field in England at length, how it was made, its unique distribution model and two new exciting projects he has lined up: Freakshift and his adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise.
This interview was first published in February of 2014.
