Iona

Scott Graham’s follow-up to Shell follows a woman whose return to a Scottish island arouses dormant passions.

Following his acclaimed debut Shell, director Scott Graham returns with another story positing a wilful female lead amid the rugged beauty of the Scottish landscape. The title refers to both a Hebridean island and the young woman named after it (Ruth Negga - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), who is forced to return home after years away, following an implied violent upheaval.

But now she’s returning to the town she left as a teenager with an adolescent son of her own. And her reintroduction into the conservative, Christian community resurfaces festering recriminations and desires among the tangled web of family and friends she left behind. Scott Graham’s script traverses its various characters’ intricate histories with subtlety and ambiguity, presenting an impressionistic collage of interconnecting dramas that feels closer to the texture of European art cinema than the traditions of British social drama. Anchored by an arresting lead performance from Negga, Iona was selected as the closing film of the prestigious Edinburgh Film Festival in 2015.