Sunset Song

Sunset Song is a drama set in the Scottish countryside of Aberdeenshire in the years before the First World War. It follows Chris Guthrie, a farmer's daughter whose mother dies worn out by repeated pregnancies, leaving the family divided: the two youngest children go to live with an aunt and uncle, while Chris and her older brother Will remain with their father John, a domineering and violent man. Growing friction between father and son drives Will away, and Chris gives up her hope of training as a teacher in order to look after her father and keep the household running. When John dies, she chooses to stay and work the family land herself, rather than leave the place she comes from. The film is an adaptation of the novel by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Terence Davies directed and wrote the screenplay, working from a cast led by Agyness Deyn as Chris, with Peter Mullan as John Guthrie and Kevin Guthrie as Ewan Tavendale among the credited performers. It was produced by Nicolas Steil, Roy Boulter and Sol Papadopoulos, and runs 135 minutes. In Davies's filmography it follows The Deep Blue Sea and precedes Benediction, sitting between those two features in chronological order.

Audience response has been moderate: on IMDb it holds 6.4 out of 10 from roughly 4,200 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 out of 10 from about 113 votes. Critics rated it noticeably higher, 7.4 out of 10 across 118 reviews, so the film was received more warmly by reviewers than by general viewers.