Shannon Walsh’s documentary “Adrianne & The Castle,” which will make its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on March 9, tells the love story of Alan St. George and his late wife, Adrianne, via fantastical musical re-enactments. Before her death, St. Georges, a mascot-maker and artist, hand-built Havencrest Castle, a medieval castle in rural Illinois that represented the love between the couple. Walsh follows St. George as he puts the finishing touches on Havencrest Castle while also grappling with his grief over the passing of his wife.
“We say it’s the greatest love story you’ve never heard of,” says Walsh, whose previous films include “The Gig Is Up.” “It’s really a story of love and grief and the risk that you take whenever you fall in love. Grief is really the central thread. But it’s also about imagination and our ability to create the worlds that we want to inhabit.”
Walsh teamed with producer Ina Fichman (“Fire of Love”) to make the doc, which Fichman calls a”documentary musical.” The duo pitched the idea for the film in 2022 at the Hot Docs Forum, where projects are presented for co-production financing to a roundtable of leading commissioning editors, film fund representatives, financiers, programming executives and angel investors.
Ultimately, Canada’s CBC came on board to finance and produce the docu.
“This project resonated so profoundly with the committee at the CBC because I think at its core, this is a film about our human values; what means something to us; and how we cope with loss, and learn to love and what that means,” says Fichman, who also produced SXSW 2024 doc feature “7 Beats Per Minute” about free diving champion Jessea Lu. “(CBC) fully funded the project, much to our surprise and frankly we had carte blanche. No one said to us “You can have one musical number.”” (Walsh is a Canadian resident.)
The “Adrianne & The Castle” trailer reveals St. George and Adrianne’s vast, ornately bizarre Havencrest Castle, as well as St. George meeting a woman dressed up as his wife, who died in 2006.
“It’s kind of strange, this castle of love,” says Walsh. “They are different people than you’ve ever seen before but it’s not like ‘Tiger King’ or an expose. It’s actually so heartfelt and people just fall in love with Alan. There’s never a dry eye after we screen it. We were thinking, ‘Do we need to bring Kleenex to the South by Southwest screenings’?”
“Adrianne & The Castle” is seeking distribution outside of Canada.
Check out the trailer below.
