Director of Photography: Liam Gilmour.
In the final part of Director Andrew Kavanagh’s trilogy of shorts about the collision between the past and present, a group of soldiers return home from war to a world that may no longer recognise them.
Welcome Home Allen takes place at the edges of a battle scene, tracking four Vikings as they flee with their fatally wounded comrade. But as the Vikings make their way across the terrain, time slowly begins to shift. The medieval landscape is curiously transformed. Sadly, not all soldiers make it home alive and Welcome Home Allen paints an unusual picture of medieval Norsemen set against a backdrop of modern suburbia.
Gilmour’s cinematography is many things. It is sweet and sad, delicate and powerful, tender and poignant. It beautifully manages to both inspire and to devastate simultaneously.
Reviewed by Vanessa Abbott as part of the Short Film Program at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017.