Express & Star

Film shot in the Midlands and Shropshire nominated for BAFTA award

Hit zombie film The Girl with All the Gifts, filmed across the Midlands and Shropshire, has been nominated for a 2017 BAFTA award.

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The Girl with All the Gifts has been nominated for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer alongside the likes of The Hard Stop and The Pass.

Watch the trailer here:

The film stars Glenn Close, Paddy Constantine and Gemma Arterton and is set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia with zombies roaming the world and a select group of children, infected with the virus, are studied and mutilated in a hope to find the cure.

Arterton plays Miss Justineau, the resilient teacher to a small group of children seemingly immune to the effects of the disease, including 10-year-old Melanie played by Sennia Nanua, with whom she forms a strong bond. Of the film, she says: "I was sent the script without knowing anything about the writer Mike Carey or director Colm McCarthy and so I read it blindly.

"I got sucked into it. It's about relationships and humanity, that's really what moved me.

"It's very thought-provoking. The zombie metaphor is deep when you think about it – humanity turning against each other, and humans eating each other and coming back from the dead. What does that mean?

"It felt relevant because it's about the next step in human evolution, and who has the right to decide who gets to live and die. If nature is evolving then surely that's what takes precedence?"

The film was shot across the Midlands and Shropshire including streets in Birmingham and Dudley, a derelict Dudley hospital, the former Powergen facility in Shirley and the grounds of Cannock Chase.

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