Year: 2022
Duration: 119'
Set in and around a faded old cinema in an English coastal town in the early 1980s, it follows Hilary a cinema manager struggling with her mental health, and Stephen, a new employee who longs to escape this provincial town in which he faces daily adversity. Both Hilary and Stephen find a sense of belonging through their unlikely and tender relationship and come to experience the healing power of music, cinema, and community.
Biography
film director
Sam Mendes
(Reading, UK, 1965) founded and ran the Donmar Warehouse in London for ten years. He was the founding director of Neal Street Productions and The Bridge Project. His work has been seen at the National Theatre, RSC, Royal Court, Old Vic, Young Vic, BAM, the West End, and on Broadway. Films include American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Away We Go, Skyfall, Spectre, and 1917. Awards include the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture and three other Academy Award nominations, five BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, three Tony Awards, five Olivier Awards, the Olivier Special Award, three Evening Standard Awards, two Directors Guild of America Awards, the PGA award, the Jason Robards Award, and the Hamburg Shakespeare Prize. He has also won the Director’s Guild Award for lifetime achievement. He is an Honorary Fellow of the National Film and Television School, and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was made a CBE in 2000 and knighted in 2020 for services to drama.
FILMOGRAFIA
American Beauty (id., 1999), Road to Perdition (Era mio padre, 2002), Jarhead (id., 2005), Revolutionary Road (id., 2008), Away We Go (American Life, 2010), Skyfall (id., 2012), King's Lear (ep. National Theatre Live, serie tv, 2014), Spectre (id., 2015), 1917 (id., 2019), Empire of Light (id., 2022), The Franchise (serie tv, 2024).
Declaration
film director
“For most people, their most formative period is their teenage years. For me, that was the late ’70s and early ’80s: the music, the movies, the pop culture of that period generally formed who I was. It was a period of great political upheaval in the U.K., with a great deal of very incendiary racial politics – but at the same time, an amazing period for music and for culture generally – very creative, very politicized, very energized. Empire of Light itself, however, is a movie almost entirely born out of the pandemic. Lockdown was a period of intense self-examination and reflection for all of us. And for me it meant starting to confront these memories that I’d been wrestling with since childhood. That was the spur to write – to explore those memories and to see if I could unlock anything interesting.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY: Sam Mendes. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Roger Deakins. FILM EDITING: Lee Smith. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Mark Tildesley. COSTUME DESIGN: Alexandra Byrne. MUSIC: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. SOUND: Stuart Wilson. CAST: Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, Toby Jones, Colin Firth. PRODUCERS: Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes. COPRODUCERS: Celia Duval, Lola Oliyide. PRODUCTION: Neal Street Productions, Searchlight Pictures.
CONTACT:
The Walt Disney Company
