Sir Ian McKellen Stars In Teen’s LGBTQIA+ Film
Image: ianmckellen/Instagram
Jacob Franklin’s directorial debut has been made even more memorable by acting legend Sir Ian McKellen, who has agreed to star in the 14-year-old’s first film.
The film, Dragged Through Time, focuses on 1000 years of LGBTQIA+ history, as well as what it means to be queer today.
The youth-led drama collective Notice Productions uses film to explore “issues that are neglected, misunderstood or deemed too awkward to approach”. Previous projects have addressed youth radicalisation, coercive control, and artificial intelligence.
Speaking to PinkNews, Franklin said Sir Ian agreed to work on the film thanks to connections from the Director of Drama at Eton College, Scott Handy.
“We weren’t really expecting a reply,” Franklin said. “But then he texts us back and says in his words, not mine, that he’s ‘really inspired by this and would love to come and do this’. And I’m like, yes, absolutely!”
The 14-year-old director described said working with the famous stage and screen actor was relaxing. “It didn’t feel like a professional actor was sitting in the room with me,” he said.
McKellen’s character, great uncle Peter, is a partially closeted member of the protagonist’s family, and is inspired by LGBTQIA+ people from the 1970s and 80s.
McKellen reflects on 14-year-old self
The 86-year-old stage and screen giant said that the film was the “one thing that would get me back to Windsor”.
“I often look back to myself at his age and regret I wasn’t close enough to my parents to talk to them about what I knew about myself,” McKellen said in a behind-the-scenes video posted to Facebook.
“I never told either of my parents that their only son was gay. The idea that at 14 I could have plucked up the courage to have a conversation with them about something so personal… to see [Jacob] in this situation makes me think perhaps I could have done this if I had been a bit braver or if the world had been a bit different.”
Jacob then tells McKellen the importance of the Lord of the Rings and X-Men film star being in the film was not so much about him being famous, but because he was involved in gay liberation and LGBTQIA+ rights movements in the 80s and 90s.
The film is set to premiere at Windsor and Eton’s first-ever Pride in July. Franklin said the experience had been empowering and “quite overwhelming”.
“It means a lot that Pride is coming here this year because it’s a really exciting event and a space where people can be accepted for who they are. It means so much that my film is going to be premiering there.”
He hopes that the audience will leave the viewing with “mixed emotions, but overall, quite a happy feeling.”
Let’s hope we get this in Australia, not long after it is a massive new debut talent, on home soil.