The Bafta-winning writer, director and composer – who can count Quentin Tarantino and Warren Ellis among his fans – discusses exploring the dark side of Cornwall in his latest film, Enys Men
On a wind-lashed afternoon a few miles from Land’s End, I spot Boswens to the west of the wild, bumpy track. She is a standing stone, more than 2.2m (7ft) tall, situated alone on hard bumps of grass: some think there is a Neolithic tomb beneath her. From different angles, she looks like a trig point on the top of a mountain, the head of an axe or – most peculiarly – a person in profile.
Boswens’s looming presence is central to Enys Men (pronounced Ennis Mayne, meaning “stone island” in Cornish), the eagerly awaited film by Cornish writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin. His previous feature, Bait, was an edgy, 16mm black-and-white film about the tensions between Cornish villagers and tourists. Despite Jenkin having worked in film for more than 20 years, Bait saw him crowned as an overnight arthouse success, winning him the 2020 Bafta for outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer. It was his first film to get major distribution.
