The Ceremony is an award-winning film about migrant workers on a grim mission with a corpse. Its director relives a January shoot hampered by hailstones, flash floods and frozen moors
‘The Yorkshire Dales are at their most alive when it’s really miserable and horrible,” says Jack King, director of award-winning British independent film The Ceremony. It’s the story of carwash workers from Bradford who end up in the countryside near the quaint village of Kettlewell as they carry out a grim mission with a corpse. “It’s a weird liminal space,” adds King. “It’s dead. It’s barren. There are no trees anywhere. It’s not like the tea-cosy version. It can be a really nasty place.”
Shot over 12 frigid January days in 2023, on a tiny budget of £120,000, The Ceremony was hampered by hailstones, flash floods and cold snaps that froze the moors and made carefully scouted locations inaccessible. Scenes were scrapped and layers hastily put on as cast and crew hunkered down in the local pub that served as their base. King says he embraced the elements and channelled a certain German director, whose struggles with on-set disasters are legendary. “I just wanted to be Werner Herzog,” he says. “The worse the weather and circumstances, the better the art.”
