Things were going well for Scottish filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones at the start of 2020. The director of Scandal (1989), This Boy’s Life (1993) and Rob Roy (1995), among many others, Caton-Jones was preparing for the theatrical release of Our Ladies, a passion project he’d been trying to get made for over 20 years. It had received its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2019, where it “played out of this world”, in his words, to an audience of roughly 800 attendees in its first public screening. Flying relatively under the radar in a stacked program largely comprised of Cannes, TIFF and Venice titles, Our Ladies received strong early notices from big publications that did cover it from the festival, including a rave write-up from Sight & Sound and a five-star review from The Times. Following a Scottish premiere for the comedic drama at the Glasgow Film Festival in late February, the movie was scheduled for a saturation release at the end of April.

And then most of the world’s theaters closed indefinitely…

Full interview for Filmmaker