An independent filmmaker from Hitchin is set to premiere his latest feature at Letchworth’s Broadway Cinema on Thursday.

Hit the North is the latest work of solo writer, director and producer Dan Sayer, featuring Irish novelist Rob Doyle in his first film role.

According to Dan, the film is “an absurdist existential road movie set against the backdrop of the 1984 miners’ strike”.

Shot in high-contrast black and white, the film focuses around a hitchhiker’s search for his dad.

Along the way, characters from the history of the A1 motorway emerge – a Jarrow marcher, a First World War soldier and a 16th-century monk.

Alongside Rob, French actress Adelaide Leroux and Bill Fellows – who appeared in the critically-acclaimed Lady Macbeth last year – take on roles in the Dan’s latest project.

Dan has been making films for more than 15 years, his first in 2001 being a political documentary about the rise of the global anti-capitalist protest movement.

He then went on to make several feature-length documentaries, before turning to fiction with Madrigal, a film about the trials of three women in London and their attempts to be free.

Dan told the Comet: “As truly independent filmmakers we attempt to rekindle the experimental spirit of film in the 1960s and ’70s, Hit the North began as a film about my personal memories of hitchhiking up and down the A1 in the early ’90s, but soon morphed into a fictional road movie of a man in search for meaning in his life and in the politics of his youth.”

Dan and cinematographer Jamie Quantrill self-funded Hit the North to ensure they maintained artistic control.

When asked about future ventures, Dan said: “Rabblewise films are currently in pre-production on our next feature, Alba, which is concerned with the mysteries of unrequited love.

“Two old friends stay up all night to get to the heart of the matter and put the world to rights, both coming to a realisation of what each means to the other.

“The feature is the first part of a planned trilogy of films about love and the heart.”

Hit the North is to premiere at Letchworth’s Broadway Cinema on Thursday at 7.30pm. The cinema is offering a free glass of champagne to all attending and there will be a Q&A session with Dan.

For more information about Hit the North, go to rabblewise.net.