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Swale film festival director Ken Rowles speaks about the best of the region's movie talent

There is nothing quite like seeing the places you know appear on the big screen.

Audiences at the Swale Film festival will have the chance to experience just that this week.

Strawberry Fields, which will be showing at two venues, uses unique scenery around Sheppey, Sittingbourne and Norton.

One of the locations featured in the movie is the coastline around Shellness at the eastern end of Sheppey.

The director, Frances Lea, owns a beach hut in the area where she spends summers with her partner and their 12-year-old twins. She splits her time between her home in Finsbury Park, North London, and the Island.

"I have always loved the scenery there," the Bournemouth Film School graduate said. "It is so very beautiful.

"The characters are quite damaged, if you like, and I was very interested in putting them in a very beautiful setting but also a timeless setting.

"The characters are quite angsty characters that could be in a typical Mike Leigh film but instead of showing them in a similar backdrop, we are showing them in the Kent landscape."

The story follows a young free spirit named Gillian, played by Brideshead Revisited actress Anna Madeley, who takes a job picking fruit and accepts an offer to stay in a shabby caravan.

She meets and flirts with rugged farm hand Kev (Emun Elliot). However, her idyllic new life is jeopardised by the arrival of her sister Emily (Christine Bottomley, from The Land Girls).

Also featuring prominently in the film is Newlands Farm, in Lewson Street, Norton, for scenes set on a fruit farm.

Frances, who used to pick strawberries on a Faversham farm in her youth, said it was the ideal setting for her drama.

"People go there for transitory work and I was very interested in that, being a place where people collect without being very settled," she said.

Other places that can be recognised in the film are Mill Way, Sittingbourne, Kingsferry Boat Club, Ridham Dock Road, and Swale Halt station near the Sheppey Crossing.

Strawberry Fields will be showing at the Avenue Theatre, Avenue of Remembrance, Sittingbourne on Friday, February 24 at 5.15pm for £5.

It will then be screened at Blue Town Heritage Centre, High Street, Blue Town, as part of a double bill with A Tribute to Her Majesty costing £10, on Sunday, February 26 at 1pm.

To book tickets for Strawberry Fields at the Blue Town Heritage Centre call 01795 662981, or for the Avenue Theatre visit www.avenuetheatre.co.uk or call 01795 471140.