Female-led Spaghetti Western with Sicilian flavour being cooked up in Galloway

The film is the latest initiative from writer and director Jessica Fox, who hopes it will help open the door for more female influence over the movie industry.

Daily Record

By Stuart Gillespie

June 2, 2025

[Jessica Fox, Emily Willox and Diana Phillips]

 A Spaghetti Western with a difference is being cooked up in Galloway.

The film will have all the usual features of a Wild West movie – sheriffs, gun-toting outlaws, wagon trains, saloons, bar brawls and shootouts.

But the entire project is female-led and aims to be fully funded by women.

And the Scottish project will also have a Sicilian flavour.

Spaghetti Western is the latest initiative from Wigtown-based, US-born writer and director Jessica Fox who hopes it will help open the door for more female influence over the movie industry.

She and London-based producer Diana Phillips, believe it’s essential to have more films created from the female gaze and with female financing.

Jessica said: “It’s a fun, authentic, deliciously different take on the Wild West – how it was really won, as gun toting bad guys face the ultimate showdown when Sicilian cookery comes to town.

“But the project is far bigger, it’s about empowering women of the 21st century to start transforming the movie industry, by getting involved as investors, directors and producers.

“It’s a sector that’s overwhelmingly dominated by men. Men decide who and what to fund, the film and TV that we watch and our cultural narratives. Even the films with female central characters are largely made through the male gaze.

“It’s time that changed, with fresh stories and ideas that bring new perspectives to the big screen – and with that, new audiences.

[Diana Phillips, Jessica Fox and Emily Willox]

 “The only way that’s going to happen is if we begin making movies that are funded by women and offer the insights and experience they need to truly take the leading role.

“She who holds the purse strings tells the story.”

Spaghetti Western is set in 1881 when Elena Fardella, a young Sicilian widow, finds herself thrust into the battle for control of the remote, dust-blown town of Eden, New Mexico.

Her only weapon is her skill as a cook and determination to use food to bring people together.

Jessica, who is behind award-winning movie Stella and the romantic memoir Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets, has secured Grammy and award and Pulitzer Prize winning Rhiannon Giddens to record the soundtrack and it is hoped filming will begin next year.

Development funding is in place, thanks to female angel investors, with chair of Women’s Enterprise Scotland professor Lynne Cadenhead backing the project.

The team is now calling on other women to get involved, with investors being offered the chance to appear in the film.

Diana Phillips said: “We have a brilliant script, a great creative team, the music has been recorded and development funding is in place – now we are looking for women to come forward as investors and collaborators so we can make a great movie and a real difference to the movie industry.”