Motion Picture Capital, BFI and Creative Scotland have announced that filming is now underway on Tell It to the Bees, an adaptation of Fiona Shaw’s critically acclaimed romance novel, which stars Anna Paquin (True Blood) and Holiday Grainger (My Cousin Rachel).
The film is being directed by Annabel Jankel (Live from Abbey Road, Skellig: The Owl Man) and features a supporting cast that includes Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones) Emun Elliot (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Steven Robertson (Doctor Who), Lauren Lyle (Outlander) and newcomer Gregor Selkirk. Here’s the official synopsis…
Dr Jean Markham (Anna Paquin) returns to the town she left as a teenager, to take over her estranged late father’s GP surgery. When a school-yard scuffle lands Charlie (Gregor Selkirk) in her office, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and tell his secrets to the bees, as she once did. The new friendship between the boy and the bee keeper brings his mother Lydia (Holliday Grainger) into Jean’s world. In the sanctuary of the Doctor’s House the two women find themselves drawn to one another in a way that Jean recognises and fears, and Lydia could never have expected. But, in 1950’s small-town Britain, their new secret can’t stay hidden forever.
“Fiona Shaw’s compelling love story was hugely inspirational to me for an unholy mash-up of 1950’s social and magical realism,” said Jankel. “Totally thrilled to be working with our wonderful cast, that includes Anna Paquin, Holliday Grainger, Kate Dickie, Emun Elliott and the young Gregor Selkirk…..and of course, the bees.”