MetFilm Distribution has confirmed that they will release David Allen’s Wilding on June 14, in cinemas across the UK and Ireland. The film is based on Isabella Tree’s internationally-acclaimed book (same title) published by Picador. Tree’s book, a Sunday Times bestseller with over 350,000 sales in the UK and worldwide, has been translated into 8 different languages. The doc premiered at the BFI London Film Festival 2023 and later at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
Wilding tells the story of a young couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing, four-hundred-year-old estate. The young couple battles entrenched tradition, and dares to place the fate of their farm in the hands of nature. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild. It is the beginning of a grand experiment that will become one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe.
The film is produced by the three-time Oscar®-winning production company Passion Pictures in collaboration with the Oscar®-nominated, Emmy, and Peabody Award-winning HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, is their third remarkable collaboration. Their most recent film, All That Breathes, was OSCAR®and BAFTA-nominated and secured the Sundance Grand Jury World Cinema Documentary prize, Praward at Sundance, the Golden Eye at Cannes, and the Grierson Award at the London Film Festival.
“It’s been a joy to work on the Wilding film with director Dave Allen and the Passion Planet team,” comments author Isabella Tree. “I hope the film will bring rewilding to a wider audience and, above all, convey the message of hope that we all need to hear – that nature can rebound in astonishing ways and remarkably quickly, if we let it. The story of rewilding […] shows how we can restore wildlife and tackle climate change. It’s a movement that is gathering pace and we can all do our bit. From large landholding to urban park, back garden and window box, we are all part of the picture. We can all help stitch nature back together again, resuscitating the life-support system on which all species on this planet – including our own – depends.’
The film, directed by five-time Emmy Award-winner David Allen and photographed by multi-BAFTA & Emmy Award-winning cinematographers Tim Cragg and Simon de Glanville, features a musical score composed by Biggi Hilmars and Grammy-nominated Jon Hopkins, recognised by The New Yorker as “one of the most celebrated electronic musicians of his generation.”
