Lanternhouse Pictures presents a Ríona Callaghan picture
TheSaltLine
118 min · 35mm anamorphic
In cinemas 13 November 2026
Cert 15
Morecambe Bay, winter 1974. Eleven months after the tide took her brother, Ada Verrall is still walking out at low water — mapping a channel that will not hold still.
Certificate
Strong language, brief scenes of drowning
Selected for Harbourlight, Kinofest Tallinn, Ostend International, Fjordlight Bergen, and nominated six times at the British Independent Screen Awards.
Reel one — the picture
Eleven months of low water, and one channel that keeps moving.
A woman walks out into a bay that has already taken one Verrall, and refuses to stop measuring it.
DirectorRíona Callaghan
CinematographyKira Lindqvist BSC
Format35mm anamorphic
Aspect2.39 : 1
Runtime118 minutes
SoundDolby Atmos
Ada Verrall was nineteen when the cockling gang went out on the eleventh of February and came back one short. The inquest returned misadventure in four minutes. The bay gave nothing back at all.
She takes her father's tide table, a hundred metres of orange line and a pocket level, and starts walking the sands at every low water she can reach — first to find him, then, when that stops being the reason, to draw the channel that killed him. The channel moves. It moves the way weather moves: on its own terms, without malice, and faster than anyone will admit at the harbour office.
Shot over twenty-nine days on the north Lancashire coast in real tide windows, The Salt Line is a picture about measurement as grief — and about a woman who becomes the most accurate surveyor on that coast because she cannot afford to be wrong twice.
Suite 2 — the grade room
Load a LUT. Every layer in the frame is rebuilt, and so is the page.
This is shot 14B, redrawn as vector. Nothing here is a filter over a photograph — all forty drawables in it, gradient stops included, carry their own hue, saturation and lightness, and the look you pick recomputes every one of them, then redraws the scope and repaints this site's key colour to match.
Retained negative74.4%
Frame800 × 335
Average luma51 IRE
Colour temp5200K
Anamorphic scope. The horizon sits a hair under the lower third and Ada is pushed right, with the whole left of frame given over to the channel she is following. Sky is cropped to a band — the weather stops competing with her.
Look
LH_TSL_14B_v07.cube
Teal & Orange
RGB Parade — histogram
Linear · 256 bins
Highlights clipped 1.9%
Shadows crushed 0.0%
Histogram: average 51 IRE, printer lights 24-25-26, 1.9% of frame clipped.
Red24
Green25
Blue26
The release look. Shadows pulled to the estuary's own blue-green, skin and the sun's column left warm, and a hard split kept between them so Ada reads as the only warm thing in a cold bay.
Conformed · v07
Camera — the shot list
Twenty-nine days, four tide windows a week, 214 set-ups.
Scroll the list and the slate keeps up. These are the six set-ups Kira and Ríona still argue about.
Set-up 14B
The Crossing
- Lens
- 40mm Panavision C
- Stock
- Kodak 5219 500T
- Stop
- T2.8
- Location
- Hest Bank, Morecambe Bay
- Shoot day
- Day 22 of 29
Golden hour gave us twelve minutes a night, four nights running. This is the frame we hung the whole grade on.
Above the line — cast & crew
Eleven speaking parts, and a bay that never learned its lines.
Ada Verrall
Maeve Dunleavy
On screen for 104 of the film's 118 minutes. Learned to read a tide table properly and refused a double for the crossing.
John Verrall
Solomon Attah
Ada's father, harbourmaster at Glasson for thirty-one years and quietly certain the bay owes him nothing.
Mrs Halliwell
Fenella Rooke
Keeps the ledger at the cockling office and has written the same four words beside eleven names.
Denny Prosser
Rhys Gwilym
Came back off the sand that February and has not been out past the second groyne since.
The Surveyor
Ivan Kaszubowski
Sent up from the Hydrographic Office to correct her figures. Does not manage it.
Directed byRíona Callaghan
Written byRíona Callaghan & Peter Osei-Mensah
Director of PhotographyKira Lindqvist BSC
EditorTom Farrow
Production DesignerRavi Sandhu
Costume DesignerBeatrix Nyholm
Original MusicNell Cartwright
Supervising Sound EditorAoife Traynor
ColouristJonah Speight
Produced byMairi Buchan & Peter Osei-Mensah
Approved billing block · Lanternhouse Pictures · v11
Lanternhouse Pictures presents in association with Northlight Film Fund and Screen Cymru a Buchan/Osei-Mensah production A film by Ríona Callaghan · “The Salt Line” · Maeve Dunleavy Solomon Attah Fenella Rooke Rhys Gwilym Ivan Kaszubowski Casting by Nadia Okonjo CDG Music by Nell Cartwright Costume Designer Beatrix Nyholm Supervising Sound Editor Aoife Traynor Editor Tom Farrow Production Designer Ravi Sandhu Director of Photography Kira Lindqvist BSC Line Producer Hattie Vance Executive Producers Dorothy Ferrier, Marcus Ilesanmi, Sian Prydderch Produced by Mairi Buchan & Peter Osei-Mensah Written by Ríona Callaghan & Peter Osei-Mensah Directed by Ríona Callaghan Colour by Lanternhouse Post, Bristol · Originated on Kodak 35mm · Recorded in Dolby Atmos · © MMXXVI Lanternhouse Pictures Ltd. All rights reserved.
Lanternhouse — the studio
Four features, one documentary, and a grading suite on Gas Ferry Road.
We develop, produce and finish our own pictures in Bristol. Nine people, a 4K DI theatre and a stubborn preference for shooting on film.
Development
Six projects on the slate at any time. We option late, write in the room, and will not take a script to market before it has been read aloud twice.
2 writers on attachment
Production
Full UK production services, film or digital, with a crew base across the South West and the North West. Tax-credit administered in house.
£840k – £6.2m budgets
Post & grade
A calibrated 4K DI theatre with a 4.2m screen, Dolby Atmos mix stage next door and a scanner that will take 35mm, 16mm and 8mm.
Baselight · 4K DCI · Atmos
Archive & restoration
Wet-gate scanning and restoration for regional archives. We have put 214 hours of north-country home movies back into circulation since 2021.
2K & 4K wet gateFront of house — screenings
Opening night, 13 November 2026. Five prints struck on 35mm.
Pick a house and a time. Thirty-five millimetre presentations are limited to the cinemas that still have a projectionist on staff.
Access screenings with descriptive audio and captions run at every venue’s first performance on Sunday 15 November.
Relaxed screening at Watershed, Thursday 19 November, 18:20. Wheelchair spaces bookable on every performance.
Notices — press
What the trade made of it, out of Harbourlight.
★★★★★
“Watches the weather like a hawk and the people like a friend. Lindqvist's bay is the year's best supporting performance.”
Aoibhinn CassidyKinofile
★★★★☆
“Callaghan has made a film about measurement that is never once clinical. Dunleavy carries 104 minutes without raising her voice.”
Gareth PyleThe Lantern Review
★★★★★
“Shot on 35mm by people who understood exactly what they were paying for. The crossing sequence is worth the ticket on its own.”
Marguerite OkoyeFrame & Sprocket
★★★★☆
“A grief film with a theodolite in its hands. Nell Cartwright's score does not comfort anybody, which is the correct decision.”
Duncan LeithNorthern Screen
Grand Jury Prize
Harbourlight 2026
FIPRESCI Prize
Kinofest Tallinn 2026
Best Cinematography
Ostend International 2026
Six nominations
British Independent Screen 2026
Enquiries — trade & press
The things distributors, festivals and journalists ask us.
Is a screener available for press and festival programmers?
Yes. Watermarked links go out through our publicist, Halloway & Fenn, within one working day of a request from an accredited outlet or a programmer with a festival email address. Write to press@lanternhouse.film with the outlet and your deadline. We do not send screeners to personal addresses and we do not lift the embargo before 06:00 on 6 November 2026.
Which territories are still available?
Thirty-one are sold. As of 12 August 2026 we hold Japan, South Korea, Brazil and the CIS, all handled by Marram Sales. Ask for Dorothy Ferrier; she will send the deal memo and the delivery schedule the same day.
Can we book a 35mm print?
Five prints were struck at Cinelab London. Two are committed to the release window and three are available to venues with a working projectionist and a reel-to-reel or platter capable of a 118-minute feature. Print hire is £340 plus carriage; we insure them ourselves. Damage reports go to Hattie Vance, not to the lab.
Do you take unsolicited scripts?
Not directly, and we say so plainly rather than leaving people hoping. We read everything that comes through BFI Network, Screen Cymru's Beacon scheme, an agent, or a director we have met at a festival. Two of the six projects on our slate arrived by the second route.
Can we hire the grading suite?
Yes — the DI theatre on Gas Ferry Road is available at £780 a day with a colourist, £420 without, and there is a 40% discount for BFI Network and Screen Cymru-funded shorts. It is booked out from 2 September to 14 October 2026 while Peregrine's tests run.
Where was it shot, and can we film there too?
Sunderland Point, Hest Bank, Heysham foreshore and Marshside, plus two weeks on stage at Ashton Court. Everything on the sands went through the Queen's Guide to the Sands and the local coastguard; you cannot simply turn up with a camera at low water, and you should not want to. Lancashire Film Office will route you properly.
In cinemas 13 November 2026