Emotional Liverpool film to be screened at Hollywood’s world famous Chinese Theatre

An emotional film featuring Liverpool comedian John May and Tim Edwards, whose daughter Elle was murdered in 2022, is going to be screened at Hollywood’s most famous cinema.

The Two of Us follows John and Tim on a life-changing walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats in memory of Elle, who was shot and killed outside the Lighthouse pub in Wallasey Village on Christmas Eve.

The film has already been shown at the prestigious Raindance Festival in London last June, now it’s heading to the world’s movie capital, Los Angeles.

It’s been officially selected for a screening at the legendary Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard as part of the Beverly Hills International Film Festival.

The Two of Us will be among around 300 feature length and short films shown over a week from April 12 – 19.

It will mean an international premiere for the documentary and a very proud moment for John, Tim and the film’s director Owen Ward.

Owen says, as a huge film fan as well as a filmmaker, it feels like an unbelievable honour.

He said:

“I’m a massive Star Wars fan, it’s why I got into filmmaking and any kind of documentary you see about it, there’s always footage of these massive crowds outside the Chinese Theatre,”

“I’ve been seeing all that since I was a kid, so to have it screened there feels surreal.

“It’s not something you think is going to happen, especially not at this stage – if you’ve made a big Hollywood film maybe, but not for this little film that all just seemed to fall into place. 

“I actually went with John to LA a few years ago, just for a laugh, and we visited the Chinese Theatre where they’ve got all the handprints outside. He made me take a picture of me with my hand in George Lucas’s handprints and now our film’s going to be shown there.”

Owen, 35, quit his job to make The Two of Us, without ever fully appreciating how much of an impact it would have on audiences.

“I never set out to make an important film, which is how people have described it, it was more a case of needing to tell this story in the best way I could.

“When you’re in the mix of everything, and you’ve seen everything so many times, you can’t fully judge how an audience is going to react. I always knew it would be moving, but I wanted it to be uplifting as well because the whole aim from the beginning was to not make something that was all doom and gloom, even though it’s such a hard subject matter. 

“How much it’s impacted people still surprises me to this day. When we had a cinema run at the Plaza in Crosby last November, we did a Q&A on the first night then at one of the other screenings John just turned up.

“He watched people’s reactions when they didn’t know he was there and when it finished, he stood at the back and there was just a constant stream of people coming out and stopping him. Every single person was genuinely affected by the film.”

Owen, who lives in Kirkby, quit his job to make the film and says getting it screened at major film festivals is beyond what they’d originally expected for it.

Now, though, he hopes it could be the start of something even bigger.

“We’re going to these film festivals, getting the word out there and spreading awareness of this film, and all it takes is for one person high up somewhere to see it, take a chance on it and hopefully get it distributed all around the world.

“We laughed about it in the past, wouldn’t it be great if we got to LA, thinking it would never happen. And now it is.”

Find out more about The Two of Us here.

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