Phil Davis' second feature, Hold Back The Night, opens this year's Critics' Week. The story of an abused girl on the run it stars Christine Tremarco as bristly and abrasive Charleen, "the kind of person you don't really like at all until you understand where she comes from," says the film's producer, Sally Hibbin. "Then, suddenly, you really feel for her and you care about what happens to her. The tension for us was in trying to make something which was gritty and realistic as well as romantic and lyrical."

Steve Chambers' screenplay was sent (unsolicited) to Parallax Pictures, Hibbin's production company. She and Davis (who had already worked together on i.d. (1994), Davis' debut feature) both warmed to its themes; what they refer to as "its balancing act between the harsh and the beautiful - the awful debilitating effect of child abuse on the one hand, and hope on the other".

Charleen's journey takes her away from the city, to the Scottish Highlands and even as far afield as Orkney. "As always with these things," sighs Hibbin, "the finance didn't come together in time. Instead of having this wonderful shoot, starting in Glasgow in the spring and arriving in Orkney at the height of summer, we ended up shooting in the autumn."

Young, Liverpool-born Christine Tremarco actually acted alongside Davis in Antonia Bird's Face, appearing as Ray Winstone's daughter. She also appeared in Carine Adler's acclaimed Under The Skin and in Dockers. Nevertheless, Davis and Hibbin were initially wary of casting her.

"She is an extraordinary actress," Hibbin explains, "but the one thing we thought Charleen couldn't be was Liverpudlian.

"We wondered what she would be like with accents. But when she came back to see us after doing some research in Bradford, she was fantastic!" Geoffrey Macnab