Harrogate set to feature in 'uplifting' new British movie released this weekend in UK and Ireland

Starring Academy Award® winner Jim Broadbent, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is based on the bestselling book of the same name by award-winning author Rachel Joyce which has sold more than over six million copies worldwide.

The film adaptation, which also stars Penelope Wilton and Earl Case, was shot in chronological order following the central character as he walks all the way from his own home in a seaside town in South Devon to a hospice 500 miles away in Berwick-upon-Tweed after he learns an old friend is dying.

Directed by BAFTA winner Hettie Macdonald of Normal People fame, the new movie takes audiences on a lengthy journey through England’s counties.

Although North Yorkshire does not have a key role, it does feature in some scenes as the crew made the trek north.

Included are South Stainey, Northallerton and Harrogate.

The end result is reported to be an “uplifting tale of self-discovery, redemption and learning to seize the moment”.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is an Essential Cinema/Free Range Films production, financed by Ingenious Media and the BFI (awarding National Lottery funding) in association with Embankment Films.

The original book by Rachel Joycewas longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, won the UK National Book Award for the New Writer of the Year and was the UK’s bestselling book from a new novelist in 2021.

The new movie, which is released on Friday, April 28, is another sign of Harrogate’s growing status as a film and TV location.

Sharp-eyed TV viewers may have spotted Plumpton Rocks, the beauty spot located near Harrogate and Knaresborough, earlier in the week in the closing episode of BBC One crime drama series Better earlier this years starring Leila Farzad, Andrew Buchan and Anton Lesser about a corrupt Leeds cop.

Famously, Paddington 2, the 2017 live-action animated comedy film based on stories by Michael Bond, starring Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Hugh Grant, was partly filmed at Nidd Gorge Viaduct.