Suffolk landscape is the inspiration for film director's debut

A filmmaker who has released his debut feature says he always wanted the film to reflect the beauty of his home county of Suffolk.

Max Morgan, 23, who is from just outside Ipswich, has written and directed Breakwater.

The film follows the tentative romance between an Oxford University student and a retired angler from Suffolk, and features actors who have starred in various Netflix projects.

Morgan said he had always wanted to shoot a film in Suffolk as he felt it had not been represented much on screen in the past.

"I wanted to fuse growing up in Suffolk and this wonderful landscape, especially around the east coast and all [those] rugged fantastic mud flats and shingle beaches, with where I was living at the time in Oxford, which is obviously a very beautiful city," he explained.

"I wanted a story that reflected that."

He added: "[Suffolk has] a landscape that I spend a lot of time thinking about and all the stories and all the people who live in it.

"But I don't think it's necessarily the best represented county on screen in films or TV, so the idea to film in Suffolk was always something in the back of my mind."

Morgan said he had enjoyed using cameras from a young age, and while at university in Oxford he and producer Jemima Chen were introduced to the producers who had made the university's first feature film – Privileged, starring Hugh Grant, in 1982.

"They laid down this gauntlet and told us to make a feature film, see what happens and just try it to learn about how the film industry works, so that was how Breakwater came about," he said.

Morgan and his crew had to fundraise to produce the film, including putting on a student art exhibition and selling a work donated by Suffolk artist Maggi Hambling.

In 2023, the cast and crew travelled to places such as Aldeburgh, Snape, and Thorpeness, Suffolk, as well as Oxford over 26 days.

After filming wrapped, Morgan spent 18 months editing before the film was completed last year.

"Every day of my life for the last two years it's been on my mind, so it's quite surreal to finally feel like we're releasing it into the world and have people watch it and connect with it," he said.

"We've had people react positively to it, which is really nice and heart warming."

The film includes lead actors Daniel McNamee, who featured in Netflix's latest season of Wednesday, and Shaun Paul McGrath, who featured in the BBC's The Invisibles.

Breakwater also features Will Gao, from Netflix's Heartstopper.

It received its world premiere at the Raindance Film Festival in London last year and will be shown at a number of cinemas, including at Aldeburgh Cinema at the end of the month.

"The most enjoyable part is when we go to these screenings and people come up afterwards and talk to you about it and say that they really resonated with the characters, because it is a film about loneliness, grief and, to an extent repression and sexuality," Morgan said.

"It means a lot to me that people have felt something and enjoyed watching the film, which is obviously the most important part."

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