FEAR OF GOD

Shattering horror debut Saint Maud earmarks writer-director Rose Glass as a major new voice. Total Film chats to Glass and leading ladies Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle about their fearless journey to heaven and hell.

- JAMIE GRAHAM

When Rose Glass was in her early teens, she’d already decided she wanted to be a filmmaker and repeatedly pored over the worldbuilding of Peter Jackson’s all-conquering Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Then something happened. Her dad sat her down to watch David Lynch’s Eraserhead, saying, “If you want to make films, perhaps you should watch this – it’s the only film I’ve ever walked out of.” However, Rose loved it, and her taste in movies promptly took a hard swing to the left.

“I watched loads of messed-up films,” she tells Total Film with a gleeful chuckle. “I got really obsessed with Pi and Visitor Q. And The Piano Teacher!” Around that time, she also saw Shaun Of The Dead at the cinema, marking the first time she’d heard the explosive reactions of an audience to a bunch of gnarly kills. “I went home and made little films with my friends, throwing gore about.”

Fast-forward 15 years to 12 October 2019, and Glass’ first feature, Saint Maud, has just been awarded a Special Commendation by the jury of the London Film Festival. The nod has completed a hugely satisfying couple of weeks for the 30-year-old writer-director, for on the eve of the festival she won the £50,000 IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Bursary Award, presented in association with the BFI to provide meaningful support to an exciting new voice. Jury member Danny Boyle was ecstatic in his praise.

“Rose Glass is an extraordinary talent and powerful storyteller,” said Boyle. “Saint Maud is a genuinely unsettling and intriguing film… Striking, affecting and mordantly funny at times, its confidence evokes the ecstasy of films like Carrie, The Exorcist and Jonathan Glazer’s