Filmmaker is inspired by struggles of everyday life

AFTER packing up his busy life in LA, filmmaker Will McDowell returned to the UK feeling lost creatively.

While a world away from his fast-paced life in America, returning to the family home in Shiplake was where he found the inspiration for his next project.

Mr McDowell describes Mother Wound, which will be released in the spring, as a love letter to the area which he admits was not always easy to fit into.

The film follows Chloe, who is whisked back to her childhood home to care for her injured grandmother.

Chloe, who is in her 30s, quickly finds that it’s not just a wounded leg that needs healing but her relationship with her workaholic mother Laura.

It was shot in Henley in October and November last year and will wrap up next month ahead of its premiere in April.

The film stars Amelia Kenworthy, known for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as Chloe, Ella Kenion, from the Catherine Tate Show as her mother Laura and Sheila Reid, who plays Madge in the ITV show Benidorm, as Adeline.

It also features a scene with Sam Brown’s International Ukelele Club of Sonning Common and a zumba class led by fitness instructor Aggi Kowal, of Studio RG9, at the River & Rowing Museum.

The project was supported by a number of Henley businesses and organisations and features scenes set in the Christ Church car park, the Hart Surgery, Nettlebed village hall, the Chiltern House business centre and Cafe 1870 on the Thames Path.

Partly inspired by his own move home from the US, the film touches upon reconciling a new life with an old one.

Mr McDowell said: “I moved back here in April of 2023 after eight years in America that was split between New York and LA where I was making music videos.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would move back home, let alone get wrapped up in caring for my own grandmother. I had previously found Henley a really difficult place to be. I just found it really conservative and quite small-minded.

“I think that when I first arrived and every time I came back as a visitor, I was just shocked by how tiny the UK is, how how dense it is.

“There's so much less space. You have to make yourself smaller in a place like this, which is so not what I was doing in America – making these flashy, ridiculous music videos on really high budgets.

“I think it’s humbling to be in England. We're made to be more aware of others than in America, where you can be larger than life.”

But it was these complex feelings about his hometown that Mr McDowell said sparked his creativity. He said: “I think what’s so amazing about this process is I’m really seeing how much this town has evolved in every sense.

“I feel really supported by this town in a way that I didn't expect and the film is a wild coming together of my favourite things in Henley.

“I split my time between here and my friends in London but I do really deeply appreciate this place and couldn't imagine making such a tender, vulnerable project anywhere else.

“America wasn’t feeding me creatively anymore. I had got stuck and it didn't feel like I was putting myself on a high wire. I wasn't risking it all, which I think really is needed for art to be impactful.

“When I moved back, I felt instantly really inspired and that was when I thought I would make something in Henley as I could feel that I had something to say about this place.

“Then when my grandma took a nasty fall, scraped her leg and wounded it really badly, I ended up looking after her almost full-time for a couple of months. It was only then I realised that it had the makings of a film.”

Mr McDowell’s grandmother, Pauline, who was aged 94 at the time of the injury, was cared for by staff at the Hart Surgery and Townlands Memorial Hospital before coming home to be cared for by him.

He said: “It was really debilitating for her. She had to elevate her legs all day, every day and she suffered several rounds of infections. The wound would respond one week and then deteriorate the next and it's actually a miracle that she still has her leg.”

Mr McDowell, who grew up with three sisters, Emma, Katie and Sophie, said the film's protagonist, Chloe, embodies some of the experiences he and some of his siblings had faced.

He said: “I was acutely aware, moving back, that this isn’t the best town in the world for people under the age of 40.

“This is quite a hard place to be as a young person, even going into your 30s and that’s very much a narrative in this film that this character, Chloe, is struggling with. Having one reality where she’s fully herself accepted, loud, big, she has to move back to this town and her grandma’s house where she becomes infantilised again.”

At the heart of the film is Chloe’s increasingly strained relationship with her distant and reticent mother, Laura, and despite sharing the responsibility of caring for Adeline, the two remain unable to truly connect with one another.

While Mr McDowell said that the dynamic was in no way autobiographical, he acknowledged it was part of an intergenerational relationship he was keen to explore.

He said: “It's a film about learning to like the people that we're meant to love, and it plays with this dichotomy of how when we love someone, can we not like them? This part is not entirely autobiographical, but I'm really interested in intergenerational relationships and how pain is passed down from one generation to another.

“I'm so inspired by how Gen Z is really addressing and talking about their pain, their suffering, and their resistance to doing things in the old way. Chloe represents this generation and where her mother can't offer her the love or kindness she needs. By the end of the film, Chloe is able to offer that back to her mother and reverse the child/ parent role.

“I like this idea that Chloe arrives in Shiplake in her slobby clothes, probably hungover, thinking, ‘I'm dreading seeing my mother’ and, by the end of her film, she finds purpose in giving care and love.

“I found that as I'd come back quite lost from my time in America, that providing love and care was the only thing that truly mattered and matters.”

The film also incorporates the teenage experience of growing up in a countryside town. Its opening scene features a bin set alight, an act of vandalism that is later revealed to have been the work of a group of unruly, or perhaps bored, teenagers.

Mr McDowell, who attended Rupert House School before studying at Abingdon Secondary School, said that for a lot of his childhood, he found himself creating his own fun.

He said: “My childhood was spent cycling around Shiplake looking for purpose and my teenage years were spent drinking in Mill Meadows in Henley. We used to get up to trouble and there's a nod to that in this script. There's a nod to this town not being an easy place to be a young person.

“I used to enjoy really escaping to Reading and Oxford where we could at least roam around shops we couldn’t afford anything in. There's only so many times you can hang out in Mill Meadows as a teenager before you lose your mind. But in summer, it's the best place to be.

“My childhood here, especially my teenage years, was just sitting by the river having the most amazing time from afternoon to sunset. My evenings were spent roaming around, from one end of Henley to the other, just pretending to be more grown up than we were.”

Mr McDowell said that he felt a desire to give drama a go, aged seven, while watching a production by the Acorn Music Theatre Company at the Kenton Theatre in New Street.

He said: “I had a friend, Joe Henwood, who was in it and I was quite jealous but I didn’t say anything.”

After the show, he was persuaded to join the group by its leader and family friend, Gail Rosier, who suggested he might make a good director.

He said: “I was seven and I didn’t know what a director was. That group taught me how to collaborate, how to trust my own creative instincts and how to make magic happen regardless of how much money is there or not.”

The group’s influence has not worn off on McDowell and his current project has been executive produced by former Acorn and Six The Musical composer, Toby Marlow, and also features the music of another Acorn contemporary, folk musician Megan Henwood.

Mr McDowell credits his first-ever experience on a film set to 101 Dalmatians, in which he and his twin sister Sophie appeared as extras at the age of four. The film was being shot in Hambleden and their mother had spotted an advert in the Henley Standard.

He said: “I remember being on set at that age and knowing, even at four ‘oh my goodness, this is exciting and I want more of this’. My sister and I ended up having a shot in the film of us holding hands in our dressing gowns when the dogs came home.”

Mr McDowell said he would like to thank the local vendors that had supported the film, which included Phyllis Court, Buddy’s Burgers and the Baskerville Arms. The film is set to premiere in April, and McDowell said he intends to hold a local screening.