*Our screening on Sunday, January 28th, will be followed by a Q&A with director Marc Isaacs and main actor Lori Yang.

When Lori, a young Chinese filmmaker, arrives in the small English village of Thaxted, she discovers it’s a place where the dead surround the living and the border between the two is easily crossed. Lori is introduced to the village church and she becomes fascinated with long dead Socialist Vicar, Conrad Noel, who speaks to her from beyond the grave. And he’s not the only one. Filmmaking and archive breaks down the borders between the past and present in a tale of love, loss and betrayal.

Following on from his last hybrid feature, The Filmmaker’s House (2020), Marc Isaacs again embraces the artistic freedom that working with a micro-budget and a cast of unknown non-professionals provide. This Blessed Plot is his attempt to innovate by remaining outside conventional industrial film production structures. He works with people from some of his past documentary films and new characters he has encountered in Thaxted

'A strangely haunting pastoral comedy shot through with a lively sense of absurdity.' - Ryan Gilbey, The New Statesman

'Life and death coalesce with Morris bells in a curiously moving exploration of identity and loss.' - The Folk Archive

'A complex work that challenges the borders between myth and reality, waking life and dreams.' - Muriel del lon, cineuropa