Wool in Sheep’s Clothing: Athina Rachel Tsangari Sets “Harvest” As Next Feature

If you think the folks in Days if Heaven had it rough…think again. Athina Rachel Tsangari is setting her sights on the book to film adaptation of Harvest – a 2013 novel by Jim Crace which features intimation, revenge, displacement and social decomposition. While her second and third features in coming-of-age a tad bit late anthropological bliss Attenberg (2010) and the one upping competition comedy Chevalier (2015) were contemporary setting affairs, this drama promises to bring out the best in harsh economic horse and trolley era with a healthy helping of The Crucible type denouement. The project will be produced by Sixteen Films’ co-founder Rebecca O’Brien (they obviously produce all of Ken Loach’s films and most recently Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here) who is teaming with the docu and distinctly auteur cinema producer Joslyn Barnes of Louverture Films (this year they released Gunda in Berlin (read review) and In Between Dying in Venice (read review). The Match Factory are once again handling sales for this Tsangari pic. We anticipate this UK/U.S co-production to identify the cast in early 2021, and wouldn’t be surprised if production begins during the summer due to the conditions set in the source material.

Gist: The novel is set in a medieval village in England and follows the villager’s reaction to three newcomers, who become scapegoats in a time of economic turmoil.

Worth Noting: Joslyn Barnes likely brought the project to Tsangari, as she is also writing the script.

Do We Care?: We were eagerly awaiting the workshopped White Knuckles as a possible fourth feature film (it did not come to fruition) but were glad to see Tsangari reteam with Ariane Labed on 8 episoder Trigonometry. Harvest was ranked 81st on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century — so the source material is solid.