Hayden Thorpe - formerly of Wild Beasts - ponders science and nature in Tom Haines' poignant promo for The Universe Is Always Right. 

Shot in a beautifully naturalistic style in and around Hayden's native Cumbria, the narrative of Hayden as a mysterious figure discovered and brought back to health by a local farmer family, is inspired by the world around us, and the time we have had for reflection across the last year. 

TOM HAINES:

Luck was a theme on the project - with our amazing crew, weather, everyone being so positive and helpful. 

"Hayden is an old friend who escaped London during the pandemic to his native Cumbria. He shared his new music with a notion to set something up there and we knew that this was going to be a community effort in more ways than one to get it made.

"Listening to The Universe Is Always Right, and talking to Hayden about his experiences of re-encountering the Lakes - it conjured ideas about healing, about the way we’ve tapped into nature, and space, and used dead time as a positive, and I really wanted to explore that through a mythical, mystical narrative.

"We struck gold with Mary and Alec who ran a farm, and also a charity called Growing Well. Mary embraced us with open arms and before we knew it they were offering all kinds of locations, cast, and animals at us, it was exactly the kind of luck we needed.

"Luck was a theme on the project, luck with our amazing crew, luck with weather, luck with everyone being so positive and helpful. And maybe that’s echoed in the final film, it’s ultimately about shifting fortunes, thrown caution to the wind and embracing change.

"Ultimately I wanted it to feel like a British take on a Studio Ghibli film. Uncanny, at times uneasy, but mainly uplifting and hopeful."