Anchoress

Winner of the 'First Film Special Distinction' award at the Montreal World Film Festival, Chris Newby's film is a story of religious conflict set in the European Middle Ages. After a young girl, Christine Carpenter (Natalie Morse), experiences spiritual apparitions of the Virgin Mary she is coerced by the church priest into becoming an anchoress - a fate which requires her to be walled up in a chamber in the church where she must remain for the rest of her life. Although she has become an anchoress to bless the villagers, her confinement slowly begins to threaten them and, in turn, disturbs the foundations of the community in which they live. Pete Postlethwaite, Christopher Eccleston and Toyah Willcox co-star.