RUN
DIRECTED BY RUTH GREENBERG
UK // 2020
10 MINS
A woman goes out on her morning run. As she crosses her city and into a park, she deflects the everyday micro-aggressions of passing men. On a track through the woods, she encounters a walker and tries to ignore her instinct that he is a threat. Too late, she realises they are alone and there is nowhere to run
Reflective Encounters
“The chord of an earphone set brushes against a woman’s shoulder as she prepares for her morning jog. She straps herself up – arm band, shoe laces, hoodie – in what seems like battle armour with the decisive briskness of a veteran. Niamh Algar embodies the determined yet anonymous jogger with coolness and restraint, her physical presence confronting the unknown with the instrumental help of her music to accompany, shield, and uplift her.
Once the runner pops her earphone in, the world is suddenly subdued, explorable, and her own: the protagonist’s ability to tame her surroundings is also supported by the film’s clever use of score and sound design. Leaves cracking and distant chatter make room for electronic tunes, upbeat remixes and synths to mark the trajectory of a morning ritual turned symbolic. First-time director Ruth Greenberg paints a petrifying picture with cold-blooded precision when framing the scene and off-screen space as perilous. The conflict of woman versus nature is in the music and rhythmic editing alike, the sonorous blasts and the rapid cuts building up towards a strained relationship that resembles the dynamics between hunter and hunted. A conqueror can become prey, says the rule of nature, and game she does become, only for a little while.”
— Savina Petkova
Filmmaker Bio
Ruth is an award-winning, London-based screenwriter and writer-director with a specialist interest in female protagonists and elevated genre. RUN is Ruth’s directorial debut, produced by Helen Gladders (TUESDAY) and Ivana MacKinnon (BEAST, TUESDAY), and funded by Film4 and BFI NETWORK, starring Niamh Algar (CENSOR).
Ruth’s British boxing film, SUGAR, is in late-stage development with Wild Swim Films and set to be her debut feature as a writer-director. As a screenwriter, Ruth’s prehistoric Horror, THE ORIGIN, is in post-production with Oliver Kassman (SAINT MAUD).
Since 2016, Ruth has been commissioned as a screenwriter by NETFLIX US, the BFI, BBC Films, Film4, Creative Scotland and Northern Ireland Screen.
Alongside other projects, she is currently developing a NETFLIX original horror feature with Imaginarium and Vertigo Films, US, and an early-medieval horror with director Nora Fingscheidt (SYSTEMCRASHER) and producer Philippa Tsang at DCM.
In 2018, her Indian-set thriller script, THE SPARK, produced by Rooks Nest, was awarded the Tribeca Film Institute Filmmakers Fund. Her post-apocalyptic British western, THE COMPETITORS, topped the Brit List 2016, and is positioned as her second directorial feature.
Ruth has a PhD in Screenwriting from UEA and is represented by Tanya Tillett at The Agency, London.