Skip to main content
Timestalker film image; man leading woman by her hand, both dressed in 19th century costume

Timestalker

Altered States

This event has passed

Seemingly pathologically incapable of remembering the past, Agnes is condemned to repeat it time and time and time and time again in this outlandish romantic comedy from writer-director-star Alice Lowe. Agnes’s downward spiral kicks off in 17th century Scotland when she falls for the disinterested Alex (Aneurin Barnard) at a public execution, only to meet an untimely demise herself. Reincarnated every century or so, she’s masochistically drawn to that era’s equally apathetic Alex and destined to perish in her attempts to woo him.

Timestalker is both a giddy genre confection and a heartfelt tale of hard-won empowerment achieved over the course of several lifetimes. Inspired by old Hollywood’s grand romantic epics and lovingly incorporating elements of costume dramas, speculative fantasies, swashbuckling adventures, and 80s music videos, Lowe has crafted a wild technicolour romp through time that pays tribute to the ritualistic humiliation that’s often part and parcel of romantic pursuits.

 

Supported by

Media Partner

Director
Cast

Alice Lowe, Jacob Anderson, Aneurin Barnard, Tanya Reynolds and Nick Frost

Credits
Country of Origin

UK

Year

2024

Language

English

Film Contact
18+

At International Village

19+

At The Rio

89 min
Comedy Horror & Sci-Fi Romance Women Directors
Western Edge Pictures

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Ty Francis, Franki Goodwin, Mike Rattenbury, Vaughan Sivell, Natan Stoessel, Marie-Gabrielle Stewart, Peter Watson, Natascha Wharton, Bizzy Day, Kiah Simpson, Laura Brook, Charlotte Colbert, Philip Colbert, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross

Producer

Vaughan Sivell, Mark Hopkins, Tom Wood, Natan Stoessel

Screenwriter

Alice Lowe

Cinematography

Ryan Eddleston

Editor

Chris Dickens, Mátyás Fekete

Production Design

Felicity Hickson

Original Music

TOYDRUM

Alice Lowe headshot; Timestalker director

Alice Lowe

Alice Lowe made her screenwriting debut with Sightseers (2012), directed by Ben Wheatley, in which she also starred. Prevenge (2016) was Lowe’s directorial feature debut, which she wrote, starred in, and directed whilst eight months pregnant. The film opened the Venice Critics’ Week and screened at Toronto, LFF, Sitges, Rotterdam, SXSW, and AFI, before being released in the UK and the US to critical and audience acclaim. Timestalker (2024) is her sophomore directorial feature.

Filmography: Prevenge (2016)

 

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

La Grazia

Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
133 min

A contemplative, mournful but richly imagined movie about a retiring Italian President (Toni Servillo from The Great Beauty) facing two thorny ethical decisions that may define his legacy.

Image: © Andrea Pirrello

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Executioner

Dir. Luis García Berlanga
92 min

Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Deaf

Dir. Eva Libertad
100 min

Writer-director Eva Libertad has made a revealing, compassionate film about the fears and anxieties of a deaf woman (played by Libertad's sister, deaf actress Miriam Garlo) who is about to have a baby.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Mother and the Bear

Dir. Johnny Ma
100 min

Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Plague

Dir. Charlie Polinger
95 min

At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Flamenco Guitar of Yerai Cortés + Por Derecho (For the Right) Live

Dir. Antón Álvarez
95 min

Winner of the Goya Award for Best Documentary, this is an exquisite and surprisingly intimate portrait of the brilliant young guitarist Yerai Cortés, preceded by an hour of passionate flamenco music, song and dance performed by Flamenco Rosario.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema