November 2025

Anemone: Lighting the Landscape of the Face

When I first read the script for Anemone, I had an abstract idea of what the production's creative hurdles might be. Usually I’ll chronically underestimate these hurdles, but between the film's remote Welsh landscapes, unpredictable weather and ambitious set pieces, our challenges seemed quite obvious this time. The film follows Jem Stoker (Sean Bean) on a journey from his suburban home to the deep woods, where he seeks out his estranged brother, Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), in a lonely stone hut. But as it turned out, what truly tested me wasn’t the mud or the rain — it was the quiet precision of lighting two faces in that cramped hut. Cinematographer Ben Fordesman, BSC (at camera) and writer-director Ronan Day-Lewis on location for...more