Film / News
Princes Wharf hits the big screen
Back in December 2015, Princes Wharf was transformed into wartime St. Helier for a major scene in British WWII drama Another Mother’s Son. The quayside by the Balmoral became the backdrop for a sequence in which Jersey deportees are loaded aboard a 1940s steam ship. Working in collaboration with the Bristol Film Office, the production set up a unit base for the shoot at the Lloyds Amphitheatre. We’ll finally have an opportunity to see what it looks like on the big screen when Another Mother’s Son opens at more than 100 cinemas nationwide on Friday, March 24.
Written by Jenny Lecoat and directed by BAFTA-winning Chris Menaul, the film tells a little-known true story from WWII. In the Nazi-occupied Jersey of 1942, prisoners of war are put to work in slave labour camps. When Russian soldier Feodor (Julian Kostov) escapes and begs for sanctuary, local woman Louisa Gould (Jenny Seagrove) cannot bear to hand him back. So she joins forces with her sister Ivy (Amanda Abbington), brother Harold (popster Ronan Keating) and the village postmaster Arthur (John Hannah) to harbour the young man, whom she calls Bill. But her defiance places them all in grave danger.
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Many other West Country locations were used during the film’s six-week shoot. As you can see in the trailer above, Wells Town Hall was draped with a giant swastika flag. Nazis were also seen stomping through Bath’s Parade Gardens and around the Guildhall. Additional scenes were shot in Priddy, while the East Somerset Railway in Shepton Mallet played host to a steam train filled with POWs.
Read more: The definitive list of films made in Bristol
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