Finding Time film shot in Ammanford to premiere in November

Dave Jenkins came up with the idea to write and shoot a feature-length movie in Ammanford after being inspired by a monument in the town centre.

“There’s a monument in the middle of Ammanford and it is a striking feature,” he told the South Wales Guardian.

“Being a storyteller and writing short plays, pantomimes etc, I saw that and thought it would be a passageway to something exciting as well as a monument.”

He began to write the story using the monument as a spot for time travel and recruited his 11-year-old daughter Hannah to be the lead character.

Finding Time follows Hannah and her friends. (Image: Dave Jenkins)

The budding actress plays an 11-year-old girl in Finding Time, who finds a bracelet in the woods and gets pulled by her dog near the monument and realises she goes back in time.

She is able to use this to go back in time and change a number of things, using it to help her family, friends and the community. It was inspired by light-hearted films of children on adventures such as ET. “It is a nice film that follows an 11-year-old girl who makes a difference in her life as well as the lives of people around her.”

The film is shot entirely on the latest iPhone model which has a cinematic camera and features local actors and actresses as well as Hannah’s former school Ysgol Saron and was filmed over a six-month period with a cast of around 30-40.

Hannah said of her first feature film: “I feel really excited because I had been in one or two films before but they were short films and I have been excited to do a feature film instead of just short films.”

On shooting it in her hometown, Hannah said she was excited to be able to film in places she knew as that makes it easier for her, but that there were some issues during filming. “We were filming at the monument in Ammanford town and we couldn’t really shut down the street so we would have to work with the traffic and people honking their cars etc.”

Finding Time will premiere in November (Image: Dave Jenkins)

Dave added: “Being on a zero budget, we couldn’t close places down like they do for major films. We recently had to re-record the dialogue for a café scene because when we filmed it, there were lots of people there talking too.”

Dave hopes that the film will show that you don’t need to have a big budget to create a good feature film and that the community will enjoy it.

Finding Time will premiere at Cross Hands Cinema on November 18, with a second showing on November 25. For tickets, email findingtimefilm@icloud.com