RING OF POWER

Tipped for awards glory, true-life wrestling drama THE IRON CLAW tells the extraordinary story of the Von Erich family, champions in the ring and cursed in life. Total Film grapples with director Sean Durkin and hears from stars Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson to pin down how such awe-inspiring triumph can come from such terrible adversity… 

- JAMIE GRAHAM

'WHEN I WAS A KID, I USED TO GET ALL MY FRIENDS TOGETHER AND MAKE THEM WRESTLE,' smiles writer/director Sean Durkin, explaining why he found it easy to shoot the ‘full-blown action’ scenes in true-life wrestling drama The Iron Claw despite his earlier movies, Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest, containing nothing of the sort. ‘I was about 10. I’d write my friends characters and I used to make my mum film it. So in some ways I’ve been thinking about it my whole life – shooting the wrestling and choreographing it was second nature.’

For The Iron Claw, named after a signature wrestling move, Durkin took it up a notch or 10. Instead of shooting in his back garden, he had production designer James Price fashion an auditorium from a huge furniture showroom in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And instead of his string-limbed mates, he had a pumped-up Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White and Harris Dickinson smacking it down in front of a baying crowd.