Great Yarmouth: Provisional Figures is a 2022 British-French-Portuguese drama film directed by Marco Martins. It competed for a Golden Shell in category: Best Picture at the 70th 2022 San Sebastian International Film Festival. The film follows the struggles of Portuguese immigrants in a dilapidated English seaside town shortly before Brexit. Martins shot the film entirely on location in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK and film dialogue is in English and Portuguese. The film was distributed by NOS Audiovisuais and grossed £30,351 worldwide at the box office
Synopsis
Hundreds of Portuguese immigrants seeking work arrive to the seaside resort town of Great Yarmouth on Norfolk's East Coast, three months before the Brexit vote. Tânia, also a Portuguese immigrant, dreams of quitting her job supervising her fellow immigrants in the local poultry factories slaughtering and butchering turkeys for consumption, to refurbish her English husband's decrepit hotels housing her fellow countrymen in squalid and dingy conditions into Senior Citizen's Homes.
Cast
Beatriz Batarda as Tânia
Nuno Lopes as Carlos
Romeu Runa as Raúl
Robert Elliot as Bob
Kris Hitchen as Richard
Peter Caulfield as Joe
Rita Cabaço as Sandra
Hugo Bentes as Cardoso
Release
The film premiered at the 70th 2022 San Sebastian International Film Festival, held annually in the Spanish city of Donostia-San Sebastián. It is slated for theatrical release in Portugal on 16 March 2023.
Reception
Deadline's Anna Smith wrote: "Great Yarmouth: Provisional Figures is a tough but riveting watch" and particularly praised the lead role of Tânia as "beautifully performed by Batarda, whose character is always fascinating". Whilst ScreenDaily's Jonathan Romney called the film a "A chilling essay in hard social realism, but with a nightmarish expressionistic spin". IMDB gave an aggregated Review score of 6.9 from 157 User-reviews, whilst FilmAffinity rated it 5.8 from 74 votes and Letterboxd recorded a score of 3.5 (of 5) from a total of 324 User-ratings.