Filmmaker’s no-budget Hardy on

By Dan Goater dan@westdorsetmag.co.uk

Filming Thomas Hardy adaptations on a mobile phone and a shoestring budget may sound like a challenge, but it’s one that aspiring filmmaker Rose Goldthorp is throwing herself into.

Working with her mum Ann-Marie, the motherdaughter team set up the Wessex Dramas Project earlier this year after relocating to Weymouth last June.

The duo have already completed one no-budget feature film called Hardy’s Regrets and are now working on their second feature film Hardy’s Hand of Fate as well as a series of audio drama podcasts. Interrupting her busy schedule of editing in her home studio, 24-year-old Rose told The West Dorset Magazine that Hardy’s stories are the perfect mediums in which her and her mum can flex their creative muscles.

“I’m really interested in fantasy stories, but that’s hard to do well on zero budget,” Rose said.

“Mum, on the other hand, is very interested in 18th and 19th century writers like Hardy, and period stories, so I think together our tastes kind of meet in the middle when we’re making these films.”

Rose and her mum divide filmmaking duties, with Rose filming on location and editing while Ann-Marie writes scripts and screenplays and co-produces.

Their films have been shown at museums and Portland’s Royal Manor Theatre and have even attracted the attention of film festival judges.

Rose said: “We now have one feature film and three podcast seasons under our belts, so far, and are starting to rev up for our second feature film, which we’re producing this year, called Hardy’s Hand of Fate. Our first no to low- budget feature film was an anthology called Hardy’s Regrets, which has been awarded laurels for official selection at the Lift Off film festival organised by Pinewood Studios in London.

“We will be shooting another feature, which we have already adapted, called Fellow Townsmen in and around Bridport in 2026, as Hardy set his novel there but called it Port Bredy.”

Despite feeling an affinity for the work of Dorset’s most famous writer, Rose and her family have lived all over the world, moving around often for her father’s job as an IT consultant.

Rose was born in Wales and has lived in France, New Zealand and South Africa with her family,