Emma Knights / EDP
The Goob, written and directed by Norwich-based Guy Myhill, has been crowned the winner of the Golden Hitchcock, the top award at Brittany’s Dinard British Film Festival. It comes soon after the film made its world premiere at Venice Days festival, and The Goob is currently being screened at the BFI London Film Festival as part of the First Feature Competition.
About winning the Dinard accolade, Mr Myhill said: “It was just completely unexpected but an absolute thrill and honour – just for a film of our scale to get into Venice was unexpected but we have just had this run of success which has been fantastic.”
The film was shot last summer at Swaffham Raceway, Necton Diner and Fenland areas on the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire border. It is described as combining the dirty roar of stock car thunder with the visceral vision of a teenage boy’s first love. It centres around teenager Goob Taylor who has spent 16 summers helping his mum run a transport café and harvest the surrounding fields, but things change when his mum gets together with swarthy stock car supremo and ladies man Gene Womack. When migrant worker Eva arrives, Goob starts to dream of better things.
“It’s a little bit about stock car racing, a little bit about migrant workers, but really it’s a family drama,” said Mr Myhill, who said the local settings helped to inspire the film. “I made a film at the race track for Channel Four a couple of years ago and I had often passed that iconic building [Necton Diner] – so the story was really rooted with those locations in mind,” he said, describing the film as having a regional setting but being a universal tale.
He said it was hoped the film would have a cinema release in April or May next year and that it was hoped the cinema premiere would be in Norwich.
The film is produced by Lee Groom-bridge and Mike Elliott for Emu Films and supported by iFeatures.