Chatter Box Film

The Ceremony is a Bradford set thriller by Jack King, which premiered at the 2024 Edinburgh International Film Festival and won the inaugural Sean Connery prize for feature filmmaking.

On one unfortunate long night’s journey into day, two unlikely men have to form an alliance to get a job taken care of.

Cristi (Tudor Cucu-Dumitrescu) and Yusuf (Erdal Yildiz) are two undocumented workers in a car wash. A sacked former colleague commits suicide on the property. Cristi knows the discovery of the body will destroy the business and in fear of his manager, decides to bury the body.

Cristi wants rid of the body, while Yusuf, a stubborn Kurdish man, feels they should honour the man with a proper Islamic burial as is their custom; this provides all moral difficulties for the odd couple.

A moral complexity takes place across a journey over the Yorkshire Dales, and then a power struggle emerges; as the two from conflicting geopolitical and religious ideologies must co-exist.

King has delivered a quite brilliant neo-noir drama shot in evocative crisp black and white photography drawing upon the rich heritage of British horror. This influence married with the spectre of the moors (the infamous Ian Brady/Myra Hindley) and the historical legacy of Gothic horror in English literature.

King – who is from the multicultural diaspora that is Bradford and greater Yorkshire – took years to cultivate the script and there is an honesty to the predicament the men find themselves in as workers in a car wash to the need for self-preservation coupled with the need for tradition amidst upheaval.

Religion creates conflict and this collision of two men from Christian and Muslim backgrounds creates that explicitly. The film does not attempt to create harmony but instead an appreciation and understanding of these men in this current climate and crises of masculinity.

Featuring two brilliant performances by Dumitrescu and Yildiz who must anchor our attention throughout, their own histories and beliefs laid bear on film in their roles.

King also shows a dab hand at what to show and what not to show his audience such as close to the hour mark, there is a powerful stand-off between the pair.

King places his camera in the boot of the car for the entirety of the dialogue culminating in a unique pay-off, while his characters move towards and away from the stationary camera it makes the dramatic moment all the more powerful and resonant – a combination of script, acting and landscape encapsulated in one shot.

Taut, thrilling and frightening! A quiet powerful film, that will live long in the memory after its release on August 22nd, from Tull Stories.