True Things premiere: On the red carpet with director Harry Wootliff and Ruth Wilson at London Film Festival 2021

British indie director Harry Wootliff continues her exploration of the nuances of modern-day relationships from her feature debut Only You, starring Josh O’Connor and Laia Costa, with her new film True Things, though this time through a somewhat darker lens.

Adapted from Deborah Kay Davies’s novel True Things About Me, it stars the always-incredible Ruth Wilson as an apathetic job centre worker in Margate whose desperation for escape from the mundanity of her life finds her involved on-and-off with a rough-round-the-edges ex-prisoner played by Tom Burke. 

We joined the director and her star on the red carpet at the BFI London Film Festival 2021 to hear more about the making of the movie.

Wootliff told us why she wanted to tell this particular story on the big screen, what it was like working with Wilson and Burke and how she reflected on her own relationships in the process of making the film. She told us: “With my work, I try to connect with it on a personal level and then hope that that resonates with other people.”

Wilson spoke about the eight-year journey to adapt the story from Kay Davies’s book, what Burke was like on set and her desire to tell a fresh and nuanced story about toxic relationships from the perspective of a woman living on the margins of society: “I just thought there was something really acutely observational about the female experience in a relationship, in a bad relationship, and I felt that hadn’t really been seen on screen before.”

Sarah Bradbury
Videos: Filippo L’Astorina

True Things does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews and interviews from our London Film Festival 2021 coverage here.

For further information about the festival visit the official BFI website here.

Watch a clip of True Things here: