Known for making slick fashion films for the likes of Jonathan Saunders and Richard Nicoll, London-based director Justin Anderson’s latest project is a hazy adaptation of a short story by French writer Guy de Maupassant.

Starring Scottish actor Dougray Scott and The Science of Sleep actress Emma de Caunes, the film sees an unexpected encounter play out in a sweltering train carriage. Here, Anderson talks about the inspiration behind the film:

“What passes between two strangers who meet on a train can be as fragile as what passes between any two people, whatever their relationship. Maupassant’s story is of a fleeting alliance born out of shared circumstance, but within it holds all the instinctive impulse for human empathy.

“Though originally written in 1884 at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the fundamental question regarding nature versus culture raised in Maupassant's story, "Idylle," remains the same. The world is structured and has adapted for us to work and travel with all the benefits of modernity, but human physiology remains as it always has. The Idyll seeks to arrive at the gates of the unknown and have the courage to push on through.”