24/11/2016 - The film is the first production from Open Palm Films

Feature debutant Dominic Dromgoole’s Open Palm Films has wrapped production on Making Noise Quietly. Based on Robert Holman’s stage play, the film is a triptych of stories that explores the devastating effects of war. In the first, a conscientious objector and a roaming artist find tenderness as the carnage of World War II unfolds across the English Channel. In the second, a bereaved mother struggles with bitterness and love as she reminisces about her estranged son, who died in the Falklands. And in the third, set in Germany’s Black Forest, an ageing holocaust survivor seeks to bring peace to a disturbed young boy and his equally wild stepfather.

The cast includes Deborah Findlay, best known for her roles in The Lady in the Van [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Suite Francaise [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile], Barbara Marten (Oranges and Sunshine [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jim Loach
film profile]), Trystan Gravelle (Anonymous [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rhys Ifans
interview: Roland Emmerich
interview: The cast of Roland Emmerich…
film profile]), Geoffrey Streafeild (A Royal Night Out [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Luke Thompson (Dunkirk) and Matthew Tennyson, who reprises his role from the stage production, for which he won the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Alexandra Breede and Jacob Thomas produced the film. 

Dromgoole was the artistic director of the Globe Theatre in London from 2005 to 2016, directing several productions including a world tour of Hamlet (2014-16), which played in 197 countries, and the inaugural production in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, The Duchess of Malfi, starring Gemma Arterton. Dromgoole also created a new play programme and a VoD platform for the Globe to Screen films, and produced and edited The Complete Walk, 37 short films celebrating Shakespeare, ten of which he directed. He is the author of The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting (2001) and Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (2006). 

Dromgoole launched Open Palm Films in July 2016 and wrapped principal photography in September. Making Noise Quietly was filmed on location in Germany, Kent and Yorkshire. The film is privately funded. 

Dromgoole said, “Making Noise Quietly is a contemporary classic drama, which has had a distinguished theatrical life, and has long been crying out for cinematic treatment. It tells three stories of encounters between strangers, each happening on the edge of conflict. The backdrop for each is distinct and alive with filmic possibilities: the lush beauty of the Kent weald in 1944, the enclosed front room in Redcar in 1982, invoking memories of Terence Davies, and the claustrophobic expanse of the Black Forest in 1996. These landscapes, and the stories’ capacity to allow a powerful insight into the characters’ privacy, make for films that seem small but have an expansive resonance – they are proper chamber epics.”