HEARTLANDS

Year: 2002
UK: Buena Vista International UK
Cast: Michael Sheen, Mark Addy, Jim Carter, Celia Imrie, Ruth Jones, Phillipa Peak, Jane Robbins, Paul Shane, Mark Strong, Jade Rhodes, Paul Popplewell
Director: Damien O'Donnell
Countries: UK / USA
UK: 91 mins
UK Certificate: 12A contains moderate sex and language
UK Release Date: 2 May 2003

Synopsis

HEARTLANDS is the richly comic story of a man who decides to give up his local shop and travel on an odyssey across the heartland's of England to retrieve his first love, his friends and his dignity. Colin (Michael Sheen) is a naïve, gentle man whose life is turned upside down when his wife leaves him for the captain of the local darts team. He follows them to Blackpool from the Midlands on his beloved Honda 50, stopping and meeting an odd variety of new friends on the road who in different ways help him work out what he has to do to mend his broken heart and salvage the rest of this life.

The film is a humorous tale of innocence seen through the eyes of a man who has never quite grown up and must, for the first time, confront the outside world. It is set in the beautiful, mysterious landscape of the Peak District in the North of England, populated by a bizarre collection of campers, ramblers and hikers all at one with their surroundings.