The Choral: Ackworth's Anne Henshaw on singing in Alan Bennett's new film ahead of Leeds International Film Festival screening

Even if you know retired music teacher Anne Henshaw, you’ll have to keep a keen eye on Alan Bennett’s new film to notice her behind the costume.

“I don’t know whether anybody will recognise me, to be quite honest, because I play quite an old biddy in the choir who sort of looks down her nose at the young people coming in,” she says. “I've got a wig, and Edwardian clothes and little Edwardian glasses.”

As the Leeds International Film Festival returns today - and has a packed programme until November 16 - early highlight is a screening of The Choral, written by Leeds-born Bennett and directed by Nicholas Hytner

It is set as the First World War rages on the Western Front in 1916, and the choral society in the fictional Ramsden, Yorkshire, has lost most of its men to the conflict. The Choral’s committee decides to recruit local young men with the help of new chorus master Dr Henry Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes).

Filming took place at locations such as Victoria Hall in Saltaire and The Crown Hotel in Harrogate.

Some of the members of the choir that perform in the film, Ramsden Choral Society, will also be doing a special performance before the start of the screening at Hyde Park Picture House tomorrow.

One of them is grandmother-of-eight Anne, of Ackworth near Pontefract in West Yorkshire.

Before retiring, Anne - a member of Leeds Philharmonic Chorus and chamber choir The Mastersingers - having trained as a teacher at Bretton College near Wakefield, worked at various schools in Pontefract and went on to become head of music at what is now Ossett Academy.

It was friends who saw a call-out on Facebook for people who might be interested in performing in The Choral choir.

“I'm not on Facebook myself but they thought I might be interested, so I applied like - apparently - 1,200 people did,” she says, and it seems her talent and experience caught the eye of the filmmakers.

She says: “There are other factors as well, of course, because they needed some women, some men - some younger men, particularly, for the story in the film - and maybe height and age came into it as well. So I do think I was lucky to get it, really. It was a fantastic experience.”

Anne, an alto, was one of around 40 people picked for the choir, which mainly performs music from Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, and he was amazed by the standard of her fellow singers.

“We had to learn the music that we had to sing in the film and that was the wonderful thing about it, because often in films, they dub the voices, so they just get random people. I do think the director, Nick Hytner, actually fought to get proper singers and proper musicians in the film, generally, actually, but certainly in the choir. So the soundtrack on the film is actually us singing,” she says.

The choir was led by the film’s choral music director Joseph Judge, and although he was working with excellent singers, they started off having to pretend they weren’t quite up to scratch.

“We were asked to sing quite poorly at first as we were representing a small town Yorkshire choir that had been decimated by the men having to leave the choir to go to war,” says Anne.

“So we had to think, Okay, what would an amateur choir sound like? So the diction, the vowels and the intonation were quite as clear as we would normally sing it. So it was quite fun, that.”

The film stars the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Emily Fairn, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong, Roger Allam, Ron Cook and Simon Russell Beale.

Although he was mostly separate from the group, Anne got talking to Fiennes, who is famous for roles including M in the latest James Bond films.

“I did manage to speak to him, actually, and he was very nice and very polite,” she says.

“Weirdly, I was encouraging him a bit because he did say that he found conducting very challenging because he'd never been in that world before. He's not been in a choir, he'd never conducted.”

Anne has already seen the film a few times, including at its premiere in London earlier in October and a recent showing in Bradford.

“The audience reaction was fantastic,” she says. “I love Alan Bennett, anyway, I'm a big fan of his.(The film is) very Alan Bennett - it's funny, it's moving.”

Anne’s husband Paul, daughters Becky, Emily, Jo and her grandchildren are thrilled about her role.

Leeds International Film Festival starts today (Thursday), with Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s portrait of lyricist Lorenz Hart, picked as the official opener. The festival will also screen Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, the latest film from Lynne Ramsey, Die, My Love, Mary Bronstein’s dark comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s drama The Voice of Hind Rajab. Meanwhile, the Constellation Feature Film Competition presents new international filmmaking from Austria, Belgium, Chile, Egypt, France, India, North Macedonia, Sudan, and USA.

Tomorrow, a reduced number of the choir members from The Choral will be singing material heard in the film before the screening in Hyde Park.

J S Bach’s ‘Oh sacred head, Sore wounded’ from St Matthews Passion is one of those that they had to sing badly at the beginning of the film.

Anne says: “We're going to sing that again and show that we can actually sing it!”

The Choral is on at Hyde Park Picture House from 6pm tomorrow.