San Francisco Frontiers - Stay still and don't wear yellow: UK filmmakers on working with hawks

For starters: stay still, be quiet and do not wear yellow, according to the makers of a British film about an academic who adopts a hawk while grieving her father's death.

"H is for Hawk", an adaptation of a bestselling memoir by Helen Macdonald, was screened at the British Film Festival in London on Sunday ahead of a fuller international roll-out. It will start screening in US cinemas in December, in time to qualify for the 2026 Oscars race.

It chronicles the Cambridge University historian, played by Claire Foy, taming and befriending the Northern goshawk as she grapples with the death of her bird-loving father, played by Brendan Gleeson, and increasingly withdraws from human contact.

The hawk appears on-screen with Foy for large parts of the movie, posing challenges for the cast and crew.

"There's a real etiquette to dealing with these beautiful creatures, and a real respect and a reverence, and all of us had to observe that," Foy told AFP on the red carpet of the movie's screening at the London Film Festival on Sunday.

"I just attempted to be as still as Helen would be and to make sure that I didn't scare them and that they trusted me."

Foy, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of a young Queen Elizabeth II in the hit Netflix series "The Crown", joked it felt like she became the birds' "bodyguard".

- 'Blown away' -

Foy's co-star Denise Gough, who plays Macdonald's best friend, said four different goshawks were used during filming.

"They all had quite different temperaments for different points in the film," she noted.

Gough recalled special on-set rules, including that "nobody could wear yellow" to avoid distracting the predatory birds.

"Claire had to do a lot more than I had to," she said of letting the fearsome-looking creatures sit on a gloved hand.

"She was amazing by the end -- she was just a complete natural, but initially it's quite a thing."

Macdonald said seeing her memoir and her goshawk Mabel come to life for cinema audiences had left her "blown away".

"She (Foy) is so amazing... not only that emotional impact of what she's doing on-screen but the way she interacts with the hawks," Macdonald told AFP.

"It's a big deal to have a hawk on your fist, it's like holding a leopard or something! And the honesty with which she portrays the whole thing is just magnificent."

"H is for Hawk" is not the first British film to include a large bird as a central character. A landmark Ken Loach drama "Kes", in 1969, featured a boy's bond with a kestrel.

W.Thompson--SFF