My Kingdom

Synopsis: Feature film. An urban crime drama updating King Lear to modern-day Liverpool. The leader of a gang, Sandeman, decides to divide his territory after the murder of his wife in a street robbery. He would like his favourite daughter (Jo) to take control of his business, but his other two daughters claim their share of the estate. The film parallels King Lear quite closely and there are quotations and paraphrasing from Othello and Julius Caesar. The film’s epigraph credits its source ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/They kill us for their sport’ .
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Film
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Year of release: 2002
Duration: 116 mins; 10,468 feet

Director

Don Boyd

Producer

Gabriele Bacher; Neal Weisman

Cinematographer

Dewald Aukema

Screenplay

Don Boyd; Nick Davies

Music

Deirdre Gribbin; Simon Fisher-Turner

Art Direction

David Endley

Cast

General: In BOOM TOWN (ITV 10 October 2001), the final episode of a six-part series on film production in Liverpool, director Don Boyd talks about his reasons for choosing Liverpool as the setting for MY KINGDOM.
Reviews: Courtney Lehmann, ‘The Postnolstalgic Renaissance: The Place’ of Liverpool in Don Boyd’s MY KINGDOM in Burnett, Mark Thornton & Ramona Wray, Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp 72-90

Shakespeare, "My Kingdom". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av36799 (Accessed 19 Sep 2024)

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