PROVOKR Pick: Official Secrets
Keira Knightley Starts a War
This week, we have a film from the Sundance Film Festival as our PROVOKR Pick — the based on a true story, political thriller Official Secrets. Official Secrets is directed by Gavin Hood, from a screenplay he wrote with Gregory and Sara Bernstein. The film tells the true story of British whistleblower Katharine Gun. Gun leaked a secret NSA memo to the press that exposed a joint US-UK spy operation against members of the United Nations security council. Spying on UN members? Super illegal! The purpose of this mission was to blackmail members of the UN to convince them to vote in favor of a 2003 resolution that would sanction the invasion of Iraq.
Sounds crazy, right? It gets crazier. Although the leaked memo caused an uproar and officially put the kibosh on any UN resolution about invading Iraq, President (at the time) George W. Bush announced he didn’t need UN backing anyway and invaded Iraq. Not only was the war not stopped, but Gun was arrested for violating the Official Secrets Act, all for exposing an illegal spy operation to egg on a war that never should have happened.
Keira Knightley stars as Gun. Joining Knightley is an impressive cast that includes, Matt Smith (as the journalist who published the leaked memo), Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans, Adam Bakri, Indira Varma, and Ralph Fiennes. The film was picked up by IFC Films and will be released on August 30 here in the US.
