Rust premieres at Polish film festival three years after shooting

Before the screening, Rachel Mason, a close friend of Hutchins who filmed a documentary about the making of Rust, recalled how difficult it was to complete the movie with all the controversy surrounding it.

She said some crew members told her not to film them on the closed set, in case, she said, it was discovered they had worked on Rust “and I might never get a job again”.

Crew came back to finish the filming after they realised it might help Hutchins’ family.

“She had this amazing gift of becoming friends very, very fast with people. And they all fell in love with her,” she said.

Ms Mason also recounted a conversation with Hutchins’ mother 18 months ago during which she told her she wanted the film to be completed because it was her daughter’s “big work”.

Rust depicts the manhunt for grandfather and grandson amidst a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and tumbleweed dirt towns.

It knowingly acknowledges classic westerns including John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ and Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’.

Souza was very close to his own grandfather, who, he said, loved westerns.

Several people I spoke to after the screening enjoyed the movie with Jan, a film colourist from Warsaw calling it “a classic western”.

Leonora, a cinematographer from Belarus said it was brilliant and she had cried all the way through Ms Mason’s speech.