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THE WORLD IS UGLY AND THE PEOPLE ARE SAD

By Brian WELSH

LA BELLE ALLEE PRODUCTIONS LTD - as PROD

Black comedy - Development 2023

Trying to put his life back to gether after tragedy robs him of his best friend and career isn't easy for emerging artist Jay Underwood when he's targeted by the Glasgow Underworld for a debt he doesn't owe by a girl he used to love.

- Year of production
- 2023
- Genres
- Black comedy, Thriller, Drama
- Countries
- UNITED KINGDOM
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 3 - 5 M$
- Duration
- 109 mn
- Director(s)
- Brian WELSH
- Writer(s)
- Vincent HUNTER
- Producer(s)
- Karen SMYTH (LA BELLE ALLEE PRODUCTIONS LTD)
- Synopsis
- The World Is Ugly and The People Are Sad - Synopsis
  
  Madrid. On the opening night of a sell-out show at one of Madrid’s hippest art galleries, two twentysomething artists, Jay and Fabian, celebrate the first act of what they hope will be glittering careers. But tragedy strikes after the party, when an attempted mugging ends with Fabian dead and Jay scarred for life.
  
  Glasgow. 18 months later. Jay has retreated to his home city, his dreams shattered. Penniless and unemployed, he has withdrawn into a fug of booze and medication to deal with the loss of his best friend and the promise of the life they once had.
  
  But this inertia is suddenly shattered when, coming out of therapist’s appointment, Jay is bundled into the back of an SUV and set upon by a brutal enforcer, Mackie, who informs Jay he has 72 hours to find a large sum of cash owed to Mackie’s gangland boss, Lenny Williams.
  
  Beaten and dumped back on the street, a missed phone call leads Jay to his ex, Nuala, who confesses that when her daughter Maisie’s life was threatened, she fingered Jay for a debt she cannot pay. Despite their relationship having ended several years earlier, Jay’s promise to look out for Maisie leaves him with no choice.
  
  With the clock now ticking, a request to track down his old art school professor on the faint promise of a pay day, plunges Jay into a darkly comic urban odyssey in his attempts to get hold of cash he doesn’t have, to pay a debt he doesn’t owe.
  
  Amid this mayhem, Jay also meets Edith, an enigmatic musician, and the person who might just change his life…
  
  Culminating in a heart-stopping roof top chase and a raucous music performance, and crossing paths with a range of disparate characters, from louche bohemians and pompous art world fakers to footballer’s wives and Albanian mafiosi, A Walk Across the Rooftops, is one man’s journey to the end of the night, in a test of the things that really matter: love, loyalty, and the possibility of redemption in our chaotic 21st century.