Watch the trailer for a new documentary about A Year In A Field

Anti-Worlds Releasing have taken the UK distribution rights to A Year In A Field, a quiet film by Christopher Morris, which receives its world premiere at this year’s Sheffield Doc Fest – on the 16th June.

The only UK film in competition Morris’ film documents a standing stone in a Cornish field – shot over a year as the world around him tries to make sense and cope with the stresses and strains of climate change and the human condition in direct contrast to the still majesty of the stone.

The story of one Cornish field told over one climatic year.

Winter Solstice 2020: with his camera and tripod, BAFTA winning documentary filmmaker Christopher Morris began filming each day in a field near his home.

“I’ve never glued my hand to a road, or strapped myself to a tree and I’ve never been on a climate protest march but once in a lifetime natural disasters are happening more than once in my lifetime and I’ve got to do something…”

A quiet, unnoticed, one-man vigil, a direct-action of stillness.

He stopped filming on Winter Solstice 2021: a year that UN Secretary-General António Guterres, said was “make or break” for humanity to confront the climate crisis.

“I struggle to comprehend what I am being told.”

A Year In A Field is not made by a climate scientist. It is a local, lo-fi, low-impact film – in contrast to the overblown, blue-chip, carbon-generating film productions that fly the globe in pursuit of unfamiliar wonders to address the climate emergency through tech-driven cinematic dazzle – more akin to science fiction.

“How do we respond to such monumental and remote stories?”

BAFTA-winning documentarian Christopher Morris invites us to slow down, as he films for a year in a West Cornwall field; to immerse ourselves in this quiet, direct-action of stillness, to take a breath and reflect on the planetary impacts of our brief human existence, under the watchful gaze of the Longstone, an ancient monolith that predominates this elemental landscape.

From Winter Solstice 2020 to Winter Solstice 2021, a string of unprecedented worldwide climate disasters, met by weak global political resolve, are revealed as just fleeting moments, under the ever-present unflinching granite gaze of the Longstone.

There are no interviews or experts in this film. In fact, there are no human beings at all; instead, an unassuming Cornish field near Land’s End takes centre stage, and a crop of spring barley forms the centre of an unfolding, compelling and beautiful narrative.

The field is extraordinary in one respect – at its centre is the Longstone, a 4000-year-old standing stone, carved, and thrust into the soil at a time when humans first began on an industrial scale to adversely affect the planet. This pillar of granite has stood silent sentinel to everything we have done and continue to do to our planet. The ominous stone figure forms the central protagonist in this sublimely unique film – it points to where we have come from and perhaps where we are headed.

A cultivated field, an ancient monolith, and a transitory human observer. This film is a record of their brief interaction.

“As I got closer and closer to the field, my view grew wider and wider, until finally, looking at the same small field, I began to see the universe.”

The film will premiere at Sheffield doc Fest on June 16 and then come to UK cinemas from September 22.