Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney are set to lead Onwards and Sideways, a new feature-length drama about Parkinson’s disease that is due soon in cinemas, on iPlayer and on One. The film puts two people, Tony Evans and Emma Dretzin, at the centre of a story that begins with both of them being diagnosed with Parkinson’s on the same morning.
Ifans plays Tony, a deputy head at a local primary school, while Linney plays Emma, a pianist, composer and single mother of two daughters. The casting gives the project immediate weight: it is not a small-screen afterthought but a major drama with backing, feature-film ambitions and a story built around a condition that will be familiar to many viewers, even if its daily realities are not.
The timing matters because the has now released a first-look image and the casting details, turning an upcoming project into a concrete one. The film is being made in North Norfolk, and Paul Mayhew-Archer, who wrote it, is part of the cast as well. Monica Dolan and Rory Kinnear are also joining the production, which is being directed by John Madden and produced by Hilltop Screen for the and John Gore Studios, with Kaleidoscope Film Distribution handling worldwide sales.
Mayhew-Archer brings the story close to home. He said he was told he had Parkinson’s in 2011, when he was 58, and has described the illness as incurable and increasingly difficult for the basic acts of walking, talking and smiling. He has also said it brought him opportunities he would not have missed, a contradiction that gives the project its force: the film is not treating Parkinson’s as a neat inspirational backdrop, but as a condition that can narrow life even as it opens unexpected doors.
That balance is likely to be the measure of the drama when it arrives. Madden has said he is looking forward to telling the story of Tony and Emma as a friendship that unfolds unexpectedly, with humour, emotion, music, dance and a challenge that cuts against easy assumptions about a little-understood condition. Lindsay Salt said viewers are in for a treat, while John Gore said the project celebrates humour, courage and love in the face of adversity. The missing detail is the date. Onwards and Sideways is coming soon, but the release window for cinemas, iPlayer and One has not yet been set.
