Red Joan

Collaborations

Produced in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the conversation following the April 13 screening of Red Joan will allow members of the filmmaking team and special guests, including David Holloway, Professor of International History at Stanford University and expert on the international history of nuclear weapons to discuss the historical context of the film and the ethics of pursuing scientific discoveries that will have incredible consequence to our collective health and survival.

Description

Legendary theater director Trevor Nunn and the incomparable Judi Dench combine their efforts to tell a riveting espionage thriller with the ethics of science at its core. Dench plays Joan, arrested late in life for her activities as a spy during Britain’s quest to become an atomic power. Once a promising scientist brought into the nation’s war efforts, young Joan (played by Kingsman’s Sophie Cookson) is horrified by the information she inadvertently absorbs and is ultimately swayed by a German Communist rake and his magnetic sister into passing along secrets to the Soviet Union.

“A good old-fashioned British spy thriller in the scientific mold of Enigma (2001), with a bewitching female heroine (or anti-heroine, if you will) played by the excellent actresses Judi Dench and (as her younger self) Sophie Cookson, Red Joan revisits the incredible real-life spy case of Melita Norwood … Zac Nicholson’s cinematography is warm and involving like production designer Cristina Casali’s quaint woody laboratories, as behooves the sub-genre of British spy yarns. George Fenton’s romantic score and Charlotte Walter’s charming costumes well describe the mood of the time.” – Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter

Produced in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the conversation following the April 13 screening of Red Joan will allow members of the filmmaking team and special guests, including David Holloway, Professor of International History at Stanford University and expert on the international history of nuclear weapons to discuss the historical context of the film and the ethics of pursuing scientific discoveries that will have incredible consequence to our collective health and survival.

Sponsored by

With support from

Camilla and George Smith

Director Trevor Nunn

Trevor Nunn has been the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, and the Theatre Royal, Haymarket; he is the recipient of numerous Tony and Olivier nominations and the winner of four Tonys and seven Oliviers; and in 2012, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. He also wrote the lyrics to the musical Cats’ showstopper, “Memory.” Nunn made his film debut in 1975 with Hedda, directing Glenda Jackson to a Best Actress Oscar nomination. His other films include Lady Jane (1986) and Twelfth Night or What You Will (1996). He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain in 2003.

Film Details