{"id":593474,"date":"2026-08-14T22:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T22:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593474\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T22:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T22:36:12","slug":"paul-wright-on-mission-george-mackay-and-chasing-something-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593474\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Wright on ‘Mission,’ George MacKay and Chasing ‘Something More’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor Scottish director Paul Wright<\/a>, \u201cMission\u201d began with a feeling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor the first time with a film I\u2019ve made, it was kind of tapping into a feeling,\u201d he tells Variety. \u201cMore so than plot or story, it was just that feeling that some of us get sometimes of feeling maybe disconnected from the world and feeling you need more. You need something more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStarring George MacKay<\/a> as Dylan, an alienated man who pushes himself toward increasingly extreme experiences in a bid to evade death, \u201cMission\u201d will have its world premiere in competition at Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival. Rosy McEwen co-stars as his estranged sister Claire.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is backed by BBC Film, Screen Scotland and Ffilm Cymru Wales with National Lottery funding. A co-production between Early Day Films and 65 Wilding Films, it was developed with Screen Scotland and BBC Film. Producers are Kate Byers, Linn Waite, Alex Thiele, Marie-Elena Dyche and Lowri Roberts, while Blue Finch Films handles worldwide sales.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Wright, Dylan\u2019s increasingly dangerous behavior grew out of a romantic ideal: the desire for an \u201call or nothing\u201d existence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s that contrast of what he\u2019s feeling and this desire for sensation, and I think within that it can slide from light to dark quite simply,\u201d Wright says. \u201cWhere do you stop? What\u2019s the limit?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDylan\u2019s desire to feel and to live propels him toward the anarchic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn this kind of uber-capitalist world we live in, we\u2019ve all fallen into certain patterns that, for a lot of people, aren\u2019t fulfilling,\u201d Wright says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs traditional religion has declined and work, money and capitalism have occupied more of that space, Wright became interested in a culture of \u201cjust surviving, just getting by.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow do you feel something when you\u2019ve been kind of numbed to the modern world?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film pushes Dylan toward what Wright calls the \u201cthin line between transcendence and transgression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Paul Wright on set<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt becomes a kind of epic within one character: all or nothing, heaven or hell,\u201d he says. \u201cHow far do you go, and where do you stop, when your goal is a feeling?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMusic, movement and Dylan\u2019s body take on an almost ritualistic function as he searches for sensation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt is tapping into trying to reach a level of ecstasy or rapture,\u201d Wright says. \u201cThat primal energy maybe a lot of us have moved away from.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat impulse has roots beyond cinema. Wright drew inspiration from performance artists including Chris Burden and Marina Abramovi\u0107, as well as Dadaism and the alternative music he discovered while growing up in a small village in Fife.<\/p>\n

\n\tEncountering work outside the mainstream could feel \u201calmost like a religious experience,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOh my God, that really connects with me in a way that nothing has before,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIt became this almost obsession to seek out this alternative culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe sees outsider figures such as radical performance artists as \u201cmodern-day shamans,\u201d willing to disturb accepted patterns in the hope of revealing another way of living.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSometimes it can become uncomfortable when someone rubs up against that, or challenges that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tDylan ultimately directs that challenge inward.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe feels he has to go as far as he possibly can to complete his own journey,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIt\u2019s about that challenge of the self and going into his own darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut \u201cMission\u201d also gives Dylan an emotional tether in Claire. McEwen, who broke out in \u201cBlue Jean,\u201d plays the estranged sister whose presence reconnects him with childhood and an earlier sense of possibility, before the constraints of adulthood began to close in.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRosy McEwan as Claire in \u201cMission\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDiana Patient<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was a simplicity in the world,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIt felt anything was possible at that stage, compared to the modern world kind of beating them down over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tClaire grew in importance during the making of the film, becoming both a counterpoint to Dylan and its emotional anchor.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re both the same side in some ways. They\u2019re both struggling,\u201d Wright says. \u201cThere are things we all need, connection and meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMission\u201d reunites Wright and MacKay more than a decade after \u201cFor Those in Peril,\u201d Wright\u2019s feature debut, which premiered in Cannes Critics\u2019 Week.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously I knew what George would give us, that he would give us his all,\u201d Wright says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWright\u2019s 2017 archive documentary \u201cArcadia\u201d also shaped his approach to \u201cMission,\u201d reinforcing his conviction about what cinema can do beyond conventional storytelling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do see film as a sensory medium, and this idea of trying to create emotions through images and sounds excites me more than anything in cinema,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not about A to B to C plot progression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, \u201cMission\u201d moves vertically into Dylan\u2019s psyche, where memory, dreams, fear, imagination and reality begin to merge.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey become these different streams of consciousness within a single character,\u201d Wright says. \u201cMaybe not discerning too much on which is which. It becomes this quite immersive experience, hopefully, for the viewer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShot in and around Glasgow in 2024, the film also gave Wright the opportunity to foreground the city as a specifically Scottish setting.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt has a character of its own. Its own personality,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a lengthy gap between narrative features, Wright is now developing several projects, and wants to push the instincts behind \u201cMission\u201d even further.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s something that I\u2019m trying to explore in film,\u201d he says. \u201cHow far can I push things to get to the things that I\u2019m most interested in exploring?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe is aware that this work is not conventional. For Wright, that is part of its value.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSometimes it is that stuff that is one step outside,\u201d he says. \u201cMy hope is that the people that do connect with it really connect with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Scottish director Paul Wright, \u201cMission\u201d began with a feeling. \u201cFor the first time with a film I\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[250848,93,47454,61,60,270,250849],"class_list":["post-593474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-edinburgh-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-george-mackay","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-paul-wright"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}