A FEELGOOD real-life Hollywood movie based on a rags-to-riches horse that won Wales’ biggest prize at Chepstow Racecourse is lighting up cinema screens when it opened nationwide on Friday (June 4).

Dream Horse starring Oscar-nominated Australian actress Toni Collette, pictured right, tells the story of Dream Alliance, the steeplechaser raised by villagers on a Valleys allotment, who stunned the racing world by winning the 2009 Welsh Grand National.

Filming took place at the racecourse in early 2019, and the movie, which also stars Damian Lewis, Owen Teale, Sian Phillips, Peter Davison and Gavin & Stacey’s Joanna Page, has already proved a big favourite with American cinema audiences.

It follows the amazing real-life tale of how supermarket cleaner and barmaid Jan Vokes and road-worker husband Brian enlisted the support of the local community to raise the future National winner on their Cefn Fforest allotment.

As well as racing scenes shot at Chepstow Racecourse, film crews took over Blaenavon near Abergavenny to shoot the allotment footage and other scenes.

Hollywood star Collette, who wowed cinema-goers with her performance in Muriel’s Wedding, said: ”It has the biggest heart of any film I have ever been a part of.”

But when Jan first told her husband she wanted to breed a racehorse and keep it at the allotments, Brian said “you’re off your ****** head.”

And Brian, played in the film by Game of Thrones star Teale, also called her a “silly bloody mare”, Jan recalled this week.

The couple had previously bred whippets, pigeons and budgies, but had no experience with raising horses.

They bought a foal for £300, teamed up with local accountant Howard Davies, and got friends at a workingmen’s club to join a syndicate putting up a tenner here, a tenner there.

Dream Alliance steadily made his mark in the racing world, but a catastrophic injury severing his tendon at Aintree in 2008 looked to have ended their hopes.

But the group put all their winnings into stem cell surgery and incredibly the horse recovered to go on and secure sporting immortality in Wales’ biggest race, ridden to victory by Tom O’Brien.

The story is even more amazing given that the 50-year married couple started raising their family in a house without a bathroom or heating, where wash-time involved a tin bath.

Last month, Chepstow Racecourse bosses brought Dream Alliance back from his Somerset retirement stables to meet racegoers ahead of the film launch.

And they said: “Racing at Chepstow has created some incredible stories over the years, but not many of them get the Hollywood treatment!

“The story of Dream Alliance is an inspiring one to say the least.

“The white-faced chestnut won the Coral Welsh Grand National in 2009 at Chepstow Racecourse for trainer Philip Hobbs and jockey Tom O’Brien after being raised on an allotment in the South Wales Valleys – it is a truly rags-to-riches story.”

Locals who played extras in the 2019 filming may well get to spot themselves on the big screen.

The inspiring tale first made waves around the world in 2015, when a documentary about the National winner, Dark Horse, premiered at the Sundance Festival in Utah and saw the couple appear on TV and radio shows across America, where they were put up in swish “out of this world” hotels.

Louise Osmond, the documentary director, said at the time: “It resonated with a local community that has seen pretty hard times.

“It’s so mad and improbable and ambitious to try to raise a horse on an allotment with slag heaps in the background.

“Jan Vokes, however, is the kind of person whom I discovered never gives up, who says “no one is going to tell me what my limits are.”

“And she took on the sport of kings after deciding she wanted to have a go.

“Jan bought a thoroughbred mare for £300, who was possibly the slowest race horse in Wales at the time, and paired her with an ageing stallion, and raised the foal on their vegetable patch.

“Then she badgered the village until a syndicate of them agreed to take on Dream Alliance’s costs for a tenner a week.

“This group of mates take on the elite of that closed world and breed a champion.”

Directed by Welsh filmmaker Euros Lyn, Dream Horse has received critical acclaim in the US after also premiering at the Sundance Festival, with the Chicago Sun calling it: “One of the most entertaining and loveable films of 2021.”

But things were a bit more homely for the UK premiere - at Blackwood’s Maxime Theatre last week!

Brian Vokes said at the premiere: ““I still can’t believe it. We got the horse just to have a bit of fun - we never dreamed he would do what he did but he took us to places we would have never gone.”

“It doesn’t seem real to watch someone else on the screen play you. It just doesn’t seem real.”

The film is now in cinemas nationwide , including in Newport, and will be screened locally at Monmouth Savoy from June 25 to July 1.

Trailers of the film can be seen on YouTube.