Jackdaw UK premiere held at Teesside's Showcase Cinema for 'high-octane' thriller filmed in Hartlepool and Tees Valley

Jackdaw is written and directed by Shotton Colliery-born Jamie Childs and stars Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Victoria actress Jenna Coleman and This Is England’s Thomas Turgoose among others.

Described as a ‘high octane thriller’ it is about Jack, a former motocross champion and army veteran played by Jackson-Cohen, who finds himself fighting for survival while searching for his kidnapped brother across the industrial backdrop of the North East.

The stars and supporters of the film enjoyed a glitzy screening at Teesside Park’s Showcase Cinema De Lux Cinema on Wednesday night.

Director Childs, who is currently living in Hartlepool, said: “I looked out of the window, and the North Sea’s right in front of me: the wind farm, the shoreline that takes you to the Redcar steelworks, and down through Seal Sands, which is where the industrial oil refineries are.

"I could literally see every one of those things.”

Filming took place on the town’s Brenda Road, in the sea off the Headland, and at the Northern Film and TV Studios in Lynn Street.

Jackson-Cohen, known for 2020’s Invisible Man and Netfilx series The Haunting of Hill House, said: “The script that Jamie had written, it was like nothing I’d ever read.

“It was fun to pick something up that was pure adrenaline from start to finish.”

Coleman, who previously filmed scenes for Victoria at Hartlepool’s National Museum of the Royal Navy, added: “It had a sense of flamboyance and theatricality amongst that very industrial, urban setting.”

Jackdaw hits cinemas nationwide on Friday, January 26.