RITA DI SANTO assesses the winners of the most politically charged festival to date
Official Secrets (15)
Directed by Gavin Hood
BASED on the true story of British whistleblower Katharine Gun, who put her career and family on the line in an attempt to stop the Iraq war in 2003, this sharp political thriller still resonates loudly.
Gun, played superbly by Keira Knightley, was a Mandarin translator at GCHQ who leaked an email to The Observer in which the US spook agency the NSA asked Britain to gather intelligence — or dirt — on certain members of the UN security council to persuade them to vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq.
Sadly, Gun failed and to avoid a witch-hunt of her colleagues she confessed to her actions. She was charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act but wasn’t taken to court until a year later. In the meantime, her Turkish husband was threatened with deportation.
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Late Fame, The Death of Robin Hood, Leviticus, and Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
MARIA DUARTE admires the scale of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer


