At CPH:DOX 2024, BAFTA- and Emmy-nominated director Ursula Macfarlane (The Lost Sons, Untouchable, Charlie Hebdo) and award-winning producer Mandy Chang pitched their new feature, whose working title is The Second Woman. One of the buzziest projects presented at this year’s edition, it promises to be a radical, provocative documentary built around a legendary 24-hour play starring actor Ruth Wilson.
This “dazzling theatrical experience” will also play as “an ambitious narrative about love, power, identity and the line between reality and performance,” say the project notes.
Chang (Writing with Fire, Misha & the Wolves, Welcome to Chechnya) is producing the picture for Undeniable, a non-fiction label owned by UK giant Fremantle.
First, Marcfarlane asked the audience: “Who in this room has ever been in love?”
“In our story one woman [called Virginia] breaks up with 100 men in a 24-hour ground-breaking piece of performance art,” Chang says, adding it will showcase “painful, shocking, tender, zany and sexy” moments.
“The goal is to explore a fundamental human experience, that of relationships,” highlighted the director. Most of the 100 men are non-pros, but just ordinary people aged between 18 and 85. A handful of them, however, are A-list stars – the likes of Idris Elba, Ben Whishaw, Aidan Gillen and Andrew Scott.
Every break-up scene will be completely different, and will explore a wide range of dynamics including violence, betrayal, love and power struggles. The project’s trailer, characterised by its eerie – yet fascinating – atmosphere, delivered very effectively the array of contrasting emotions experienced by the characters.
The project’s complex, uncompromising leading role is played by TV, theatre and film actor Ruth Wilson, winner of a Golden Globe, two Olivier Awards and a Tony- and BAFTA- nominee. Some of her most prominent roles include Lorna in The Woman in the Wall, Mrs Coulter in His Dark Materials, Alison Bailey in The Affair and Alice Morgan in Luther. She also starred alongside Jake Gyllenhaal on Broadway in the two-hander play ‘Constellations.’
The Second Woman will see actors “playing the truth and make believe,” thus prompting the question: “aren’t we all acting, all the time?”
“On stage and off stage we’ll see the actors and hear them talking, and getting lost in their stories,” the team revealed in Copenhagen, underscoring how the film ultimately explores the very meaning of performance, blurring the boundaries between artifice and reality.
On the lead role, Macfarlane said Wilson will cross the thin line between the personal and performative, as a woman “who has been shaped by her own relationships in real life.”
Talking about the status of the project, currently in production, Chang explained: “We’re currently raising the budget, and we plan to do additional filming with a handful of men, to take the film beyond the confines of the play. Here we want to talk to commissioning editors, arts organisations, NGOs, anyone interested in funding this innovative and very relatable film.”
Furthermore, Macfarlane and Chang want The Second Woman to be “a cinematic experience,” and thus they invited distributors, festival programmers and sales agents to come forward.
The panellists in attendance praised the highly original concept of the project. One of them asked the team to elaborate on the role of the audience in the film. “We’ve [already] filmed the audience, and we took all their laughs and gasps,” Chang said, comparing them to something like “a football crowd” cheering and supporting Wilson’s efforts, who ended up exhausted during her part scripted, part improvised performance.
The feature will be ready for release in 2025.
