For director Kieran Evans it hasn’t been an easy journey making his first feature film. But after almost a decade in the making Kelly + Victor is finally complete and ready to be shown in cinemas throughout the UK.

Adapted from Niall Griffiths’ novel of the same name, the film explores the relationship between a young couple who, through a shared fervent bond, find shelter in one another from the humdrum bleakness of their lives (Kelly is trying to shake off a scary ex, whilst Victor is closing in on a world of drugs).

Set in Liverpool, a city very close to Kieran’s heart, the film embraces the beauty of the city through contrast, blending the splendour of Liverpudlian architecture with the frail, desolate suburbs; all symbolic of the raw, passionate relationship between the film’s title characters.

Kieran manages to draw the audience into his story, presenting a candid look at this fragile yet intense romance, thinning the line between compassion and violence.

Alex James Taylor: How were you first introduced to Niall Griffiths and his book Kelly + Victor?
Kieran Evans: Well it goes back about ten years really, I had just read Niall’s novel Grits and then straight after read Sheepshagger. I thought Niall was one of the best writers I’d read in a long time and with us both being Welsh I seemed to connect with some sort of Welshness I guess. Though Niall described a different kind of Wales, a Wales much more in tune with how I saw it as well. It wasn’t so much a case of ‘how green is the valley’ but more ‘how fucked up is the valley’.

So I came up with the idea of making a short film about Niall, I got given his number and travelled to Aberystwyth to meet him and have a chat. I quickly found that we had a lot in common, we both have Welsh-Irish parents, are both massive fans of Liverpool FC and both have similar interests. We got talking and he decided that he didn’t want to make a film about himself, so instead we started working on ideas for a short film.

A producer I know, Janine Marmot, suggested I looked at taking the big step and making a feature. I was searching through ideas when Niall sent me over a review copy of Kelly + Victor in the post. Just about to go away on holiday, I took it with me – it’s probably not the easiest holiday read, but it was mesmerising. I read it about three or four times on holiday and in my head it just clicked that this was the film I wanted to make.

AJT: You actually wrote the screenplay for the film, turning it from novel into script. Was that difficult to do?
KE: The way we started out Niall was going to write the script, but he was basically working on novel four at this point and had become bored of the whole idea of the scripting process. With no disrespect to him, he’s already stated this, he found it hard to switch between brain one and brain two.

AJT: I imagine it helps you as a director as it gives you more control over the film as an entirety?
KE: Yeah it did, and it was really important to have Niall there on my shoulder, checking sections of the script and providing feedback. It went through a number of different drafts, lots of bad drafts, lots of ripped up drafts. Eventually everything started to lock and things started to flow. It was really interesting because I’d never really written any scripts before, it was a baptism of fire.

AJT: How did you pick Antonia and Julian for the roles?
KE: One of the things Niall and I did when we started out was write notes about what kind of look we were after for Kelly and Victor. We both agreed that Kelly can’t just be a drop-dead gorgeous looker, I don’t mean that in a mean way towards Antonia, we just didn’t want the whole ‘Lindsay Lohan’ look. We wanted to find someone who would turn the head of one man in a crowded room, not the whole room, that one person would find something unusual about them, something exciting, something enticing.

At the casting we met lots of actresses, all very good and very experienced but there was just something in the back of my head saying we were missing something. Speaking to other filmmakers they kept telling me to just keep on going, you will know your character when they walk through the door, they won’t even say a word, they’ll just have something about them and you’ll know.

Basically we were coming towards the end of casting and we had two or three people down for the part of Kelly when the casting agent phoned me and said ‘look, there’s this one other person I think you should have a look at, she’s read the script, she loves it and would love the part’. When Antonia came in she was wearing a parka jacket, her head was in a sea of fur, she looked quite fragile and her face was just mesmerising. She came in and was quiet but very determined; she had this special aura about her. She just fitted the part so perfectly.

And then the same thing happened with Julian really, Julian turned up to audition and was slightly jetlagged, he’d just come from LA I think, slightly washed-out and tired. But again, he had this kind of sweetness to him. He read lines in a very different way to the other actors, everyone else read them very forcefully, but Julian was just very soft and poetic in his reading, he brought something special to the role.

AJT: Set in Liverpool, your love of the city shows. How was it filming and searching for locations in a city so close to your heart?
KE: I’ve been going up to Liverpool since I was about eight or nine for the football, so I’ve kind of seen Liverpool change and grow over the years. When we started scripting, Liverpool had just been nominated as the City of Culture, and it changed very quickly. The waterfront was all redeveloped and there were these amazing new buildings popping up everywhere. However we didn’t want to film stereotypical Liverpool, such as shots across the Mersey and the Liver Building. So we drove around for weeks looking at places to use, we wanted to show a different angle of Liverpool.

Something else which is really interesting about Liverpool is that you have the whole new, amazing, shiny city, but in direct contrast, if you go a mile up the road you have some of the most deprived streets in Europe. It’s a real city of contrast, which makes it really interesting to photograph. Council houses half knocked down which are being eaten up by the overgrowth and deserted, desolate streets, it’s a ghost town in places. As a filmmaker it gave us an amazing palette to work with.

AJT: The film is shot in such a way it brings the audience into the relationship, acting as a third person almost…
KE: We didn’t have a big budget for this film, which meant that we had to shoot in a particular way. We had a lot of scenes set up in a day and had to film rather quickly. Very early on I wanted it to be very much documentary style, hand held camera, long takes, very Scandinavian almost.

We wanted to make it feel like the audience was there with the characters in the room. It’s a very intense film, so the aim was to try and make the set as minimal as possible in terms of crew so that the actors were more comfortable. The actors really liked this way of working because it flows better, it’s not lots of little segments which then rely more on the editing than the performance. Longer takes made them consider all aspects of their performance, and focus on getting the correct nuance. I encouraged them to think of the overall performance in order to create the energy and right atmosphere throughout filming. I find that longer takes tend to be far more mesmerising for the audience, as you become the eyes, and you are drawn into the story.

Kelly + Victor is showing at selected cinemas now. See listings for details.