Wyn Bowen Harries
In the year 1215, the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal on the Magna Carta, a seminal document that upheld the rights of free men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel's momentous struggle for justice and freedom.
Shot entirely in Welsh, Endaf Emlyn's wry and gentle film captures the magic and innocence of a young boy's imaginative world as he grapples with demons that haunt his family life. Set against the wild, windswept backdrop of the Welsh coast, The Making of Maps charts Griff's journey into adolescence and his attempts to cope with the strife with in his own family. Pulled in different directions by his philandering father, reclusive mother and unloved sister, he tries to learn the secret that eats away at the fabric of his family life. His mother ran a dance academy, but during a picnic the school's star pupil, the beautiful, ethereal Alis, vanished. Afterward, Griff's mother took to her bed, fearful of leaving her darkened room. Griff's way of dealing with his life is to draw maps outlining his own attempts to comprehend a situation that everyone seems to want to forget. -Piers Handling
