Freya Tingley in ‘The Sonata.’
Freya Tingley will play the lead in first-time US director Ali Presley Paras’ mystery-thriller Year of the Detectives, which starts shooting in Los Angeles this month.
The Aussie actor describes her character Nic O’Connell, a recently discharged Army veteran, as “like a grenade with the pin pulled: she’s tomboyish, tough and not afraid of a fight.”
O’Connell jointly inherits her grandfather’s private detective agency in the heart of Chinatown. She must set aside her differences with her co-inheritor (True Grit’s Paul Rae) to solve the mystery of her grandparents’ deaths as bodies pile up.
Chris Johnson wrote the script and the producer is Silversmith Pictures’ Joe Smith. A longtime assistant cameraman, Paras has directed several shorts including Quad, which is available on Hulu as part of the Fun Size Horror anthology.
“I’m pretty well versed in classic films so the opportunity to be in an old-fashioned mystery was appealing to me,” says Freya, whose US breakthrough was winning the role of Christina in the Netflix series Hemlock Grove.
“I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to play the lead in most of the films I do. Taking the audience into my shoes, as the protagonist, is something that really inspires me.”
She later played Frankie Valli’s daughter Francine in Clint Eastwood’s movie Jersey Boys and the leads in Nick Chakwin and David Guglielmo’s inter-racial crime drama No Way to Live and Craig Goldsmith’s thriller The Wrong Nanny.
Next she will be seen alongside Rutger Hauer and Simon Abkarian in Andrew Desmond’s mystery thriller The Sonata, set in London and France. She plays Rose, a young virtuoso violinist who inherits the family mansion after the death of her famous composer father (Hauer).
After discovering her father’s final work, a mysterious music score marked with strange symbols, she sets out to unlock the secrets of his past with the help of Charles (Abkarian), her agent and manager.
It’s a co-production between France’s The Project Film Club, the UK’s Featuristic Films, Latvia’s Tasse Film and Russia’s CTB Film Company. ARRI Media is selling the worldwide rights.