Following an extraordinary winter shoot, which saw cast and crew taking on the challenge of filming in freezing conditions in Northern British Columbia, shooting recommences on Never Steady, Never Still, the debut feature from award-winning filmmaker Kathleen Hepburn. The first day of photography is May 20th in historic Fort St James, BC.
“Soda Pictures UK has a long track record in working with local up and coming talent and we are thrilled to replicate this with filmmaker Kathleen Hepburn on our first Canadian acquisition for Soda Pictures Canada,” says Edward Fletcher, Managing Director for Soda Pictures, which has recently picked up the feature for Canada and UK distribution. With the concept short scooping six Leo Award nominations along with nods from TIFF and VIFF in 2015, and the stunning images from their winter shoot in hand, producers James Brown and Tyler Hagan, are also in discussion with sales agents ahead of the 69th Cannes Film Festival.
Starring Shirley Henderson (Trainspotting, Filth) Théodore Pellerin (Les Demons, Endorphine), Mary Galloway (Fire Song, Ariel Unravelling), Nicholas Campbell (Da Vinci’s Inquest, Naked Lunch) and Lorne Cardinal (Insomnia, Wolf Canyon), Never Steady, Never Still is a striking and emotional tour de force exploring the complexities of a mother-son relationship. Judy (Henderson) is struggling to take control of her life in the face of advanced Parkinson’s disease, while her son Jamie (Pellerin) is battling his sexual and emotional identity amid the violence of Alberta’s oil field work camps.
Written and directed by Hepburn, with Carol Whiteman executive producing, Brown’s Christie Street Creative, and Hagan’s Experimental Forest Films producing, Never Steady, Never Still is made possible with the financial participation of Telefilm Canada’s Canada Feature Film Fund, Bell Media’s Harold Greenburg Fund, and the Women In the Director’s Chair Feature Film Award, a $120,000 in kind prize presented to a Canadian woman director to complete her first or second feature film. The script also won Best Screenplay at the 2014 Vancouver International Women in Film Festival. Hepburn is an alumna of SFU, WIDC and most recently the CFC Writer’s Lab. Her work is subtly powerful and uniquely cinematic.