The Princess
A new documentary film chronicles the life of the Princess of Wales using archive footage…
Sunday, 9pm, Sky Documentaries Factual
Princess Diana was a global icon and much of her life was played out in the spotlight.
This documentary takes an immersive look at her amazing story, showing each of the major events in her life solely through archive audio and film footage, from meeting and marrying Prince Charles to becoming a mother to William and Harry and her tragic death in 1997.
There have been countless films and TV shows portraying the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, including The Crown and the 2021 movie Spencer.
But to mark the 25th anniversary of her death, this new feature-length film tells her extraordinary story in a very different way.
Made up solely of archive material, The
Princess explores the period between her engagement and marriage to
Prince Charles in 1981 to her sudden death in a Paris car crash in 1997.
We see her desperately struggling to settle a newborn Prince William for a royal photo shoot, looking lonely on a visit to India, and carving out a role as a humanitarian. But there are also shocking reminders of how she was relentlessly hounded by the press, with footage of intrusive media scrums.
‘While it’s a film about Diana, it’s also a film about our relationship with the monarchy and celebrity, and our complicity in this story,’ says director Ed Perkins. ‘Why was it that we all dissected everything she did, wore and said? And then why, after she died, was there this unprecedented outpouring of grief?’
Showing her truth
After sifting through more than 100 hours of footage, what Ed found most striking was how clever Diana was.
‘I saw someone who was very aware of how to tell her own private story through her body language,’ he says. ‘That takes emotional intelligence and understanding of your own power of communication.’