Harvest

Athina Rachel Tsangari: Harvest (GB/DE/US/FR/GR 2025).

2024 Greece, United Kingdom, Germany, France, United States, Cyprus

Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari

Screenplay: Athina Rachel Tsangari, Joslyn Barnes - based on the novel (2013) by Jim Crace

Cinematographer: Sean Price Williams - shot on 16 mm

Starring: Caleb Landry Jones, Harry Melling, Frank Dillane, Rosy McEwen

    131 min

    Loc: Argyllshire, Scotland.

    Language: English

    Distributor: The Match Factory

    Subtitles: English

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

    Fri 19.9.2025 at 20.45–22.56 Kinopalatsi 1

Paavo Ihalainen (HIFF 2025): "Over the course of a fateful week, xenophobia and capitalism plunge a peasant community into chaos in this hallucinatory and painterly period piece."

"In a Scottish coastal village, fear of famine grips the community as the year’s harvest has failed. There are three ways to respond. First, one can prepare for a long journey to beg for help from distant and wealthy nobles or royalty. Second, one can listen to strangers who happen by—suspicious visitors such as a cartographer (Arinzé Kene) or an efficiency-minded smooth-talker (Frank Dillane)—who claim to know tricks and schemes to save the crops. And third, one can vent one’s dissatisfaction on a marginalised outsider whom no one particularly cares about (Caleb Landry Jones). For this widower, it is in his own interest to make the villagers invest their efforts in one of the other courses of action."

"Subtle satirist and keen observer of humanity’s less savory behaviors, Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier, R&A 2016) returns with what may be her most ambitious work yet, examining how a village community behaves under pressure and drifts off course. Although the film is set in the past, its depiction of economic hardship and a highly segregated society, saturated with xenophobia and narrow-mindedness, clearly serves as an allegory for contemporary issues as well."

"The film’s rich and vivid illustration of nature evokes, at times, the work of Terrence Malick, and at others, 1970s folk horror films. The cinematography itself tells a part of the story: the delicate balance with nature must be earned through hard labour, and yet it remains unpredictable." Paavo Ihalainen (translated by Kati Ilomäki)

"Kohtalokkaan viikon aikana muukalaisviha ja kapitalismi ajavat talonpoikaisyhteisön kaaokseen hallusinatorisessa ja maalauksellisessa epookissa."

"Skotlantilaisessa merenrantakylässä pelätään nälänhätää, koska vuoden satokausi on epäonnistunut. Tähän voidaan suhtautua kolmella tavalla. Ensinnäkin voidaan varustautua pitkään matkaan anelemaan apua kaukaisilta ja äveriäiltä aatelisilta ja kuninkaallisilta. Toiseksi voidaan kuunnella paikalle sattuvia mutta epäilyttäviä muukalaisia, kartantekijää (Arinzé Kene) tai tehostushenkistä helppoheikkiä (Frank Dillane), jotka väittävät tietävänsä poppaskonstit sadon pelastamiseksi. Ja kolmanneksi voidaan purkaa oma tyytymättömyys yhteiskunnan laitapuolella kulkijaan, josta kukaan ei erityisemmin piittaa (Caleb Landry Jones). Tämän leskimiehen intresseissä on oman nahkansa vuoksi syytä saada kyläläiset kiinnittämään toimintansa jompaankumpaan muuhun keinoon."

"Hienovarainen satiristi ja ihmisten käytöksen ikävämpien puolten tutkiskelija Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier, R&A 2016) palaa ehkä kunnianhimoisimmalla työllään, joka tarkastelee kyläyhteisön käyttäytymistä kiipelitilanteessa ja suistumista raiteiltaan. Vaikka elokuva sijoittuu menneisyyteen, sen käsittelemä taloudellinen ahdinko ja äärikerrostunut yhteiskunta muukalaisvihamielisine ahdasmielisyyksineen kuvaa selkeän allegorisesti nykypäivääkin koettelevia ongelmia."

"Elokuvan rikas ja eläväinen luontokuvaus tuo mieleen paikoin Terrence Malickin tuotannon, paikoin 1970-luvun folk horror -kauhuelokuvat. Kuvaus kertoo omalta osaltaan tarinaa siitä, kuinka tasapaino luonnon kanssa on hankalan työn kautta ansaittava ja silti arvaamaton." Paavo Ihalainen

IMDb: "Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears."

AA: Athina Rachel Tsangari's Harvest is a piece of visionary cinema: expressively crafted in every detail, sensual and violent in its view of life, constructed as a series of painterly tableaux. It strikes with a raw immediacy and nonconformist tenderness.

Based on the novel by Jim Croce, Harvest takes place during the long process of England's inclosure acts, renegotiating time-honoured traditions of pasture, pannage and estovers, the open-field system and the ancient culture of glanage, made famous in the cinema by Agnès Varda's masterpiece Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse / The Gleaners and I (FR 2000).

The inclosure was an epic process of class struggle spanning centuries, most decisively during the Industrial Revolution, but Harvest is not a historical epic, although Tsangari stages violent encounters between the landowners and the villagers who finally leave the village and burn it down.

The focus in more on superstition and xenophobia: strangers become scapegoats for everything that goes wrong in the village. Harvest is not a tale of evil landowners vs. nice villagers. The villagers are entirely capable of evil themselves, including harassing three refugees from another site of inclosure, shearing the young woman's beautiful hair and chaining the two men to a pillory for an entire week. They also gratuitously kill the landowner's magnificent horse Willowjack.

Harvest is not a story-driven movie. Instead it is a work of imagist poetry, image-driven, often proceeding in close-ups and even extreme close-ups, but also opening to gorgeous wide shots and awesome aerial shots. 

There is a lush and bucolic drive in the harvest day feast and rain dance sequences. Among many memorable visions is a visit to a stone memorial arch, the gravesite for Cecily and Lucy: both Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones) and Master Kent (Harry Melling) have lost their wives - and their inner compass and aim in life.

All this has been caught with painterly light and colour by the cinematographer Sean Price Williams on 16 mm stock.