Introduced by Andrew Kötting.
Andrew Kötting’s feature debut, Gallivant, combines the theme of family adventure and the sea into perhaps the most inspiring film of the year. The story is simple. Kötting, his grandmother and his daughter Eden set out together to travel their way round the coastline of mainland Britain, starting and finishing on the south coast.
Eden has learning difficulties and speaks in sign language, so some of the film is subtitled. Granny gets sore feet. Together they have adventures, meet lots of characters, explore fishing villages and get to know each other. Much of the dialogue floats about this epic imagery of the sea and sky, bringing a majesty and a poetry to both.
It is difficult to describe the quiet humanism of this film. It’s about good times, low key times. It’s as if the grand racing imagery is yelling how wonderful it is to be alive, while the travellers are quietly living away. Gallivant is an epic, a road movie, a family poem about where the land meets the ocean. - Mark Cousins, Edinburgh Film Festival Programme, 1996
