ROUND UP Huisman’s Shepherd keeps a close watch on Cassidy’s Selah.
MUBI
There weren’t many laughs,” grins Raffey Cassidy, reflecting on the premiere of her latest film. It’s September 2019, and
Teasers
is at the Toronto International Film Festival where
The Other Lamb
has just debuted. It’s the grim story of a patriarchal cult in which ‘the Shepherd’
(Game Of Thrones’
Michiel Huisman) presides over an all-female group of ‘Wives’ and ‘Daughters’, including Selah
(Vox Lux’s
Cassidy).
The eerie film marks the English-language debut for Polish filmmaker Małgorzata Szumowska (Elles, Mug), and the first time she hasn’t written the script. The literary quality of C.S. McMullen’s screenplay captivated her. “I said to myself: if I have to do my first English-speaking whatever, or my first film where I’m not an author of the script, and only director, it has to be very strong,” she asserts. “The story is very strong. It’s all these women, and there’s human migration, and violence, and sexuality, and a kind of wildness in [Cassidy’s] character.”