Would you be able to be viewed as a traitor by your government if it meant that citizens knew the truth? That’s the basis of the upcoming political thriller “Official Secrets.” Based on the incredible true story of Katharine Gun, director Gavin Hood’s newest film takes a look at the truth behind the war in Iraq.
As seen in the trailer, “Official Secrets” tells the story of Gun, an intelligence specialist that discovers that the British government may be lying to its citizens to allow them to join the US in the war in Iraq in the early 2000s. Gun must then decide to become a whistleblower, endangering her future, just to tell the truth.
We saw the film at Sundance and weren’t too high on it. Our review said, “And so, this rather too-polished and pedantic film lacks any kind of identity and is ultimately a failed attempt at relitigating an important and all-too-relevant time in political history when the government weaponized propaganda to feed to the masses and valiant journalists tried to call them out their schemes.”
The cast for the film includes Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Matthew Goode, Matt Smith, and Rhys Ifans.
IFC Films is set to release “Official Secrets” in select theaters on August 30.
Here’s the synopsis:
She risked everything to stop an unjust war. Her government called her a traitor. Based on world-shaking true events, Official Secrets tells the gripping story of Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a British intelligence specialist whose job involves routine handling of classified information. One day in 2003, in the lead up to the Iraq War, Gun receives a memo from the NSA with a shocking directive: the United States is enlisting Britain’s help in collecting compromising information on United Nations Security Council members in order to blackmail them into voting in favor of an invasion of Iraq. Unable to stand by and watch the world be rushed into an illegal war, Gun makes the gut-wrenching decision to defy her government and leak the memo to the press. So begins an explosive chain of events that will ignite an international firestorm, expose a vast political conspiracy, and put Gun and her family directly in harm’s way.