The crew for the $6.5-million feature Love and Savagery is back on Canadian soil to begin the Newfoundland leg of its shoot after a two-week stint in Ireland.

Billed by its producers as a lyrical story of impossible love, the flick is coming to the big screen via the writer/director team of Des Walsh and John N. Smith — who worked together on Random Passage and The Boys of St. Vincent.

Love and Savagery, which begins filming in St. John’s on Wednesday, follows the lives of a Newfoundland geologist and poet who travels to Ireland for work and falls in love a woman who has already committed herself to the church.

‘This story is about that first great love,’ says producer Kevin Tierney, of Bon Cop, Bad Cop fame, in a telephone interview from Ireland. ‘She has a serious choice to make and it’s hard for him to understand. But she has a calling.’ Tierney is coproducing with Newfoundland’s Barbara Doran (Young Triffie) and Lynne Wilson. Ireland’s Tristan Orpen Lynch (Subotica Entertainment) is the executive producer.

Set in 1968, the film stars Newfoundland native Allan Hawco (The Trojan Horse) and Irish thespian Sarah Greene as young lovers who struggle with their attraction within the confines of a traditional Catholic Irish community.

The production was financed with money from Telefilm Canada, the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation and the Irish Film Board. The flick also benefits from tax breaks in both Newfoundland and Ireland, explains Tierney. Producers shooting in Ireland get a 20% tax discount on money they spend in the country. ‘If I spend 100,000 Euros, it’s only costing me 80,000 Euros,’ he says.

Love and Savagery will be distributed in Canada by Mongrel Media.