Wolves and green children feature in new folklore film
Scott Godding
A new film will pull together a county’s folklore involving demonic hounds, wolves and children with green skin.
FILM Suffolk is due to release its third anthology feature film titled Once Upon a Time in Suffolk and was created entirely with volunteers.
One of the producers, Julien Mery, 44, said the county was “rich” in folklore, myths and legends and felt it was only right to honour that in their next film.
The film will premiere on 4 September at Abbeygate Cinema in Bury St Edmunds and features the tales of the Black Shuck, the Green Children of Woolpit and more.
FILM Suffolk
Mery explained the project was launched in March 2023 with a callout for scripts on the theme of folklore.
They received about 100 submissions which had to be whittled down to just a few for the film.
“Suffolk is so rich in folklore, myths and legends,” Mery explained.
“We thought we would really do the county a disservice if we didn’t give a nod to that and we did find so many submissions of people who had great ideas, discovering myths that we weren’t even aware of that are told across the county.
“It’s really lovely to pay tribute and homage to those.”
Royal Mail
The film has a storyteller that introduces the various stories within the film and then takes the viewer from chapter to chapter to explore them.
Each chapter centres around a protagonist who has to navigate that world and the stories span the ages.
Mery said the film indirectly features Black Shuck — a terrifying hellhound said to have traumatised villages in East Anglia.
In 1577, according to one account, the beast broke into a Bungay church and killed two people.
Nick Cooper
The Green Children of Woolpit, a pair with green skin who were found in the village in about 1150 speaking gibberish, also feature.
The boy sadly died, but the girl reportedly survived and lost her green colour. It is believed they were actually Flemish immigrants.
But Mery said the film also had a modern twist on Rapunzel and Red Riding Hood.
“There’s a real good mix which is really engaging for lovers of folklore and fairy tales as well as families and also some slightly darker chapters as well for some thrills,” he added.
Nicholas Smith
Mery said it was “exciting” to have the finished film which involved more than 200 people from across East Anglia.
“We’re really excited to showing it to those people [at Abbeygate Cinema], in the first instance, but also with the wider world and all the lovely people of East Anglia who have already started booking up seats for the upcoming premieres and screenings, and it’s really exciting.
“We really love the fact that people are so enthusiastic about this.”
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