What’s the true price of peace?
A remarkable story of secrets and espionage explores how lives are shattered when love clashes with duty…
Joan Stanley has a secret – and she has kept it hidden for over 50 years. Until one sunny morning, there’s a knock at the door, and her world comes crashing down in the most shocking way imaginable.
Arrested by MI5, this mild, unassuming mother and grandmother, who enjoys ballroom dancing and painting
watercolours, is accused of being one of Britain’s longest-serving KGB spies… Her story is told in the extraordinary movie Red Joan, adapted from the novel by Jennie Rooney and directed by Trevor Nunn. It’s inspired by the true story of a civil servant Melita Norwood, known as the “granny spy” when she was accused of passing on vital secrets to the Russians during the Cold War.
Dame Judi Dench plays retired librarian Joan. When she is arrested on suspicion of treason, no one can quite believe it – least of all her son.
In a brilliantly subtle performance that captures all the intelligence, cunning and bravado of a woman whose loyalty was tested to its limits
in the wartime years, Judi Dench, as Joan, is interrogated on espionage charges. As the story unfolds though, we’re transported back to 1938, where we meet a young Joan, played by Sophie Cookson (Gypsy, Kingsman: The Secret Service), a student of physics at Cambridge. Falling in with a lively group who’ve formed a student Communist party, it is here she meets best friend Sonya and charming Leo Galich, played by Tom Hughes (Victoria, London Town).
Amid her blossoming romance with Leo, she gains a First Class degree in Physics – albeit for women in the 1940s, it was referred to as a “certificate” – and is offered a job on a top-secret project with Professor Max Davis, played by Stephen Campbell Moore, who she gradually impresses. When he lets her in on the secret that they are trying to create an atomic bomb, she is told by Sonya and Leo that the information “must be shared”.
Joan becomes an obvious target for recruitment by the KGB, and it is here that her most agonising decisions are made. Should she release secrets that might prevent mass destruction in the future? Torn between Leo and her growing love for Max, she must decide.
As the elderly Joan begins to crumble under investigation, will her sceptical son, who is determined to clear his mother’s name, believe the accusations?
Featuring compelling and powerful female performances, this movie will have you guessing to the end as to whether or not Joan worked for the KGB, and explores how, due to Joan’s gender, she was never seen as a threat for over half a century. As an alleged co-conspirator says,
“No one suspects us because we’re women.”
Red Joan is a stunning mix of wartime drama and modern-day intrigue, with a brilliant cast that also includes Ben Miles (V for Vendetta) and Tereza Srbova. Directed by multi-award-winning director Trevor Nunn, Red Joan is released in the
UK on 19 April 2019 by Lionsgate UK.
Now, see the film...
Turn the page for your chance to go to an exclusive woman&home screening of the movie in London’s May Fair Hotel. Alternatively, book tickets at www.redjoanfilm.co.uk >>
“Joan has some agonising decisions to make”