Louis Paxton on EIFF opening film The Incomer: 'There are bits of it that are just so Scottish'
Director Louis Paxton chats to Afreka Thomson about the honour of having his debut feature open this year’s Film Festival as well as dealing with midges, bemused locals and a performing seagull called Scampi
This August, Edinburgh International Film Festival will open not with an established auteur or Hollywood heavyweight, but with a strange, slightly scruffy and completely charming Scottish comedy. The Incomer is the debut feature from Edinburgh-born filmmaker Louis Paxton: a folk and horror-infused story about two siblings living in self-imposed exile on a remote Scottish island. Fresh from winning the Next Innovator Award at Sundance, the film arrives in Edinburgh having charmed audiences across the Atlantic. Alongside its breakout director, it boasts an ensemble cast including Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, Grant O’Rourke, John Hannah, Michelle Gomez and Emun Elliott.
For Paxton, the moment feels particularly surreal. Before he was opening Edinburgh’s film festival, he was working there. ‘It was one of my first jobs. I saw so many films there. The idea that this would screen at that festival…’ he says, shaking his head in disbelief. Growing up in Edinburgh, Paxton spent summers in Orkney, where his grandfather came from, surrounded by stories of selkies, finn-men and the folklore of Scotland’s Northern Isles. He explored shipwrecks and abandoned settlements, becoming fascinated by communities that had vanished.
That fascination led him deeper into the world of abandoned Scottish islands such as St Kilda, and the way the modern world romanticises what would have been a very hard life. ‘People would talk about abandoned houses and how sad it is that communities left. I just never felt like that. There is tragedy in it, but it’s also a really positive thing that these people found better lives.’
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Paxton’s intrigue with the lore of Scottish islands eventually became The Incomer, in which childlike siblings Isla (Rankin) and Sandy (O’Rourke) have spent decades alone on the barren island that they inhabit: hunting seabirds, chatting to persuasive mythical creatures (John Hannah in a wetsuit, no less) and defending their island from dreaded ‘incomers’. That is until the arrival of awkward council worker Daniel (Gleeson), sent from the mainland on a reluctant mission to collapse their odd little world. Upon his arrival he finds two siblings that squabble like children, eat seagulls from the bone and have a shockingly blasé relationship with violence. For Paxton, authenticity was crucial, no matter how absurd the story became. The relationship between Sandy and Isla is central to that. ‘The way things can escalate from zero to a hundred so quickly is very much the dynamic me and my sister had in our teens. You just know how to push each other’s buttons.’
Despite its distinctly Scottish setting, Paxton always hoped the film would travel. He points to Taika Waititi’s Hunt For The Wilderpeople and Boy as key inspirations. ‘They have such a strong identity and sense of place, but you could show them to anyone in the world and they’ll get it. I always looked at that and thought, “why can’t we do that with Scottish comedy and Scottish film?”’ So far, audiences seem to agree. ‘I was really surprised that in the US they understood as much of it as they did,’ laughs Paxton. ‘I’m not criticising them: there are bits of it that are just so Scottish.’
Paxton originally intended to shoot in Orkney, but rising costs and a busy tourist season made it difficult. Instead, production moved to Caithness. ‘It’s quite flat and has this sort of barren beauty,’ he says. The cast and crew spent weeks in Wick and Thurso, winning over bemused locals. ‘People would ask if we were making The Odyssey,’ he laughs, referring to Christopher Nolan’s epic which was shooting nearby at the same time. ‘And we’d say no and they’d just walk off, unimpressed.’
Still, The Incomer had its own version of movie-star glamour. Domhnall Gleeson spent one day strapped to the edge of a cliff for a particularly hair-raising sequence. ‘Domhnall’s lying on the edge… and he’s just getting eaten alive by midges,’ Paxton recalls. Then there were the trained seagulls, including one called Scampi whose previous screen credit was alongside Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse. Unfortunately, the bird proved, in Paxton’s words, ‘too well trained’.
‘We needed it to flap over people, but the bird just didn’t do anything.’ If the gulls weren’t exactly throwing themselves into it, John Hannah was quite the opposite: he spent hours in the freezing North Sea. ‘He just turned up, smoking little rollies in his make-up,’ says Paxton. Moments later, he’d be ‘holding on to these weights underwater, fighting the surge and acting at the same time. He was just the best sport.’
Now, as Edinburgh prepares to welcome The Incomer home, Paxton remains nervous. He has screened the film for audiences across the world, but not yet for the people who know its landscapes and humour best. ‘I’ve not seen it with a Scottish audience and all my family and friends are going to be there.’ It is a daunting prospect. But for a filmmaker who once hoovered popcorn from the seats he is now filling, and whose debut feature is steeped in the stories and landscapes of Scotland, there is one thing he certainly won’t be when his movie arrives in Edinburgh: an incomer.
The Incomer, Cameo, 13 August, 6pm, 9pm; Filmhouse, 13 August, 6.30pm, 9.30pm; Cineworld, 13 August, 10pm; 14 August, 1pm, 6pm; 15 August, 9.30pm.