Set in ’70s Kingston and ’80s Hackney, ‘YARDIE’ centres on the life of a young Jamaican man named D (Aml Ameen) on a quest for retribution for his revered brother. Screen Yorkshire teamed up with Sheffield’s Warp Films to invest in YARDIE, directed by Golden Globe and SAG winner Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom).
D (Aml Ameen) has never fully recovered from the murder, committed during his childhood, of his older brother Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary). D grows up under the wing of a Kingston Don and music producer named King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd). Fox dispatches him to London, where he reconnects with his childhood sweetheart, Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), and his daughter who he’s not seen since she was a baby. He also hooks up with a soundclash crew, called High Noon. But before he can be convinced to abandon his life of crime and follow “the righteous path”, he encounters the man who shot his brother 10 years earlier, and embarks on a bloody, explosive quest for retribution — a quest which brings him into conflict with vicious London gangster Rico (Stephen Graham).
Yardie © Warp Films, © Screen Yorkshire, © BFI Film Fund
YARDIE has been adapted for the screen by Brock Norman Brock (Bronson) and Martin Stellman (Babylon, Queen and Country). It is produced for Warp Films by Robin Gutch (’71, Hunger) and Gina Carter (Heartlands, Dead In A Week, Snow Cake).
YARDIE is financed by STUDIOCANAL, BFI, BBC Films and Screen Yorkshire through its Yorkshire Content Fund. Universal Music are partners in the film and their Island Records label will be releasing the soundtrack. Executive producers are Dan MacRae and Danny Perkins for STUDIOCANAL, Mary Burke and Ben Roberts for BFI, Joe Oppenheimer for BBC Films, Hugo Heppell for Screen Yorkshire, Mark Herbert for Warp Films, and Idris Elba.
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