STUDIOCANAL AND FILM4 PRESENT
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
In association with
ANTON CAPITAL ENTERTAINMENT S.C.A
and AMAZON PRIME INSTANTVIDEO
AN INK FACTORY PRODUCTION
In association with
POTBOILER PRODUCTIONS
A film by SUSANNA WHITE
Starring
EWAN McGREGOR
STELLAN SKARSGÅRD
DAMIAN LEWIS
and NAOMIE HARRIS
Produced by
GAIL EGAN
STEPHEN CORNWELL
and SIMON CORNWELL
Based on the novel by JOHN LE CARRÉ
Written by HOSSEIN AMINI
Directed by SUSANNA WHITE
UK Publicity Enquiries:
Suzanne.Noble@studiocanal.co.uk
Lucy.Powell@studiocanal.co.uk
Rupert.Goodwin@premiercomms.com
Elizabeth.Taylor@premiercomms.com
International Publicity Enquiries:
Katie.Paxton@studiocanal.co.uk
Emma.Robinson@premiercomms.com
Simone.Devlin@premiercomms.com
CAST
Perry
Ewan McGregor
Dima
Stellan Skarsgård
Hector
Damian Lewis
Gail
Naomie Harris
Aubrey Longrigg
Jeremy Northam
Luke
Khalid Abdalla
Billy Matlock
Mark Gatiss
Tamara
Saskia Reeves
Natasha
Alicia von Rittberg
Niki
Alec Utgoff
Ollie
Mark Stanley
The Prince
Grigoriy Dobrygin
Andrei
Marek Oravec
Emilio Del Oro
Velibor Topić
Maria
Jana Perez
Ballet Dancer
Carlos Acosta
CREW
Director
Susanna White
Screenplay
Hossein Amini
Based on the novel by
John le Carré
Producers
Gail Egan
Stephen Cornwell
Simon Cornwell
Executive Producers
John le Carré
Tessa Ross
Sam Lavender
Olivier Courson
Ron Halpern
Jenny Borgars
Co-Producer
Jane Frazer
Director of Photography
Anthony Dod Mantle ASC, BSC, DFF
Editors
Tariq Anwar
Lucia Zucchetti ACE
Production Designer
Sarah Greenwood
Costume Designer
Julian Day
Make-up & Hair Designer
Fae Hammond
Music by
Marcelo Zarvos
Casting by
Lucy Bevan
SHORT SYNOPSIS
While on holiday in Marrakech, an ordinary English couple, Perry (Ewan McGregor – THE
IMPOSSIBLE, THE GHOST) and Gail (Naomie Harris – SPECTRE, SOUTHPAW), befriend a flamboyant
and charismatic Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgård – AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, THE GIRL WITH THE
DRAGON TATTOO), who unbeknownst to them is a kingpin money launderer for the Russian mafia.
When Dima asks for their help to deliver classified information to the British Secret Services, Perry
and Gail get caught in a dangerous world of international espionage and dirty politics. The couple is
propelled on a perilous journey through Paris and Bern, a safe house in the French Alps, to the
murky corners of the City of London and an alliance with the British Government via a ruthless and
determined MI6 agent (Damian Lewis - HOMELAND).
From the writer of DRIVE (Hossein Amini) adapting the hit John le Carré novel – the mind behind
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, and directed by acclaimed Susanna White – this taut thriller twists and
turns its way around the world with dramatic consequences.
LONG SYNOPSIS
A dozen ballerinas pirouette across the stage of Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. A muscular male dancer
(Carlos Acosta) glides between them. He is exquisite, an arresting vision of masculinity. A glorious
leap brings the performance to a close and the audience erupts into applause so loud it sounds like
gunfire. As the curtain falls, a group of smart women exit quickly from their ornate box make their
way through a maze of corridors lined with pictures of Russia’s cultural icons to a backstage room.
There are champagne and canapés for the women, who include Olga (Dolya Gavanski) and her 18
year-old daughter Anna (Maria Fomina). Olga’s husband Misha (Rasha Bukvic) signs a sheaf of
papers, hands them over to Nicolas Petrov, known as the ‘Prince’ (Grigoriy Dobrygin) and his
consigliore, Emilio Del Oro (Velibor Topić), and in thanking him is given an ornate and historic gun.
Later that evening the family drive away, giddy with relief, heading for a longed-for reunion with
Anna’s younger twin sisters. But what looks like a routine checkpoint on the edge of a glittering,
snow-covered forest, turns out to be a cold-blooded assassination and the fleeing family are quickly
and clinically gunned down.
In Marrakech, Morocco, an attractive British couple are having dinner. Perry (Ewan
McGregor), a professor of poetics at the University of London, and Gail (Naomie Harris), a successful
barrister, are on holiday, attempting to repair their marriage following Perry’s affair with a student.
When Gail returns to their hotel room to take a work call, Perry catches a noisy group of Russian
businessmen, presumably holidaying oligarchs, eyeing her as she leaves. Entirely unabashed, their
uninhibited carousing provokes a spark of envy in Perry. He is miserable over the unhappiness he
has caused Gail and disappointed by what a middle-aged cliché he has become. As Gail’s career has
soared, Perry’s has stalled and he is ashamed of how hard he is finding it to enjoy life as a ‘new
man’.
The rowdy oligarchs do not look like men often troubled by thoughts of what it means to be
men in the 21st Century. The leader of the group is Dima (Stellan Skarsgård), a huge bull of a man in
a leather jacket, smoking a cigar. With him is Andrei (Marek Oravec), a handsome lawyer-type in a
smart suit, and a baby-faced bodyguard called Niki (Alec Utgoff). Dima waves Perry over but,
typically British, Perry resists at first before being reluctantly drawn into their boisterous circle. With
Gail still working, he agrees to go with them to a party at a villa in the Atlas Mountains.
Amid a tableau of Dionysian excess, very far from the London dinner parties Perry normally
attends, he begins to relax and enjoy the fascinating glimpse into Dima’s world. But when he hears a
woman being violently attacked, a drunken Perry reacts instinctively and squares up to a naked,
tattooed man twice his size, bearing a knife. When Dima reveals the man is a member of the Russian
mafia, it dawns on Perry the kind of world in which Dima resides. For Dima, the incident has
revealed a different kind of man lurking just beneath Perry’s rather crumpled appearance.
Seduced by Dima’s exuberance, Perry agrees to bring Gail to meet him and his family for a
game of tennis the next morning. Perry and a slightly bemused Gail are introduced to Dima’s
reserved wife Tamara (Saskia Reeves), his Jane Austen-reading, 18-year daughter Natasha (Alicia von
Rittberg), and his sons Alexei (Emmanuel Brook), aged 13, and Viktor (Matthew Brook), aged 11.
Gail befriends two six-year old twin girls, Katya (Rosanna Beacock) and Irina (Emily Beacock), who
casually reveal their real parents are dead. When Dima directs his considerable charm at Gail, she
finds herself accepting his invitation to attend Natasha’s birthday party at the family’s villa that
night.
This time the vibe is more magical than debauched and Gail, who is lovely in her Zara dress,
is wide-eyed as she takes in the opulence. As Gail is drawn into a game of hide-and-seek with the
twins, Perry is lured away by an attractive woman he met the night before. But seduction is not on
her mind and instead she takes him to the rooftop where an agitated Dima emerges from the
shadows. Dima takes advantage of the magnificent firework display distracting his bodyguards to
reveal he is the top money launderer for the Vory (Russian Mafia). His best friend was Misha, the
father of the twins, who worked for him. It was after Misha signed over his accounts in Moscow that
the Prince, who is the new, unscrupulous head of the Vory, had him killed. Now Dima is in mortal
fear for his own safety and that of his family.
He has decided to defect to Britain with them, in exchange for information on the Russians both the mafia and the state. He needs the bewildered and open-mouthed Perry to hand a memory
stick to MI6 when he arrives back at Heathrow.
Terrified but unsure what else to do, Perry does just that the next day at the airport. He and
a stunned Gail are immediately pulled into a drab room at Heathrow and questioned by the polite
and dapper MI6 agent Hector Meredith (Damian Lewis) and his colleague, the handsome Luke
(Khalid Abdalla). Although he does not yet know what information Dima has, Hector’s interest is
piqued. Hector knows all about the dirty money swilling around the City of London and the stain it is
leaving on British finance and politics. But Dima has put Perry and Gail between them, two innocents
now ensnared in the murky, dangerous world of international espionage and dirty politics. Can they
really help to save a charismatic Russian gangster, his desperate family and ultimately themselves?
The genesis of OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
“One of the strengths of John le Carré’s work is that he incorporates very important themes into a
rollercoaster ride of a thriller,” says screenwriter Hossein Amini of le Carré’s
novel OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, which he has adapted into a major new feature film of the same name,
directed by Susanna White and starring Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård, Damian Lewis and
Naomie Harris.
“The audience is thrown into the shoes of an innocent couple and there are dangers lurking
around every corner,” Amini explains. “But along the way le Carré is also saying a lot about the world
in the years post the global economic crash of 2008, and about the influence of Russia and Europe
on Britain. He personalises the story through the characters we meet along the way.”
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is produced by Gail Egan of Potboiler Productions, with Simon
Cornwell and Stephen Cornwell of The Ink Factory. The two companies recently collaborated on
another le Carré adaptation, A Most Wanted Man. It is financed by Film4 and STUDIOCANAL, which
also has international rights to the project. Potboiler enjoys a long-standing relationship with le
Carré, having previously produced two acclaimed screen versions of his novels: Fernando Meirelles’
Oscar®-winning The Constant Gardener in 2005, in addition to Anton Corbjn’s 2014 adaptation of A
Most Wanted Man.
“We were lucky enough to read the book prior to publication,” says Egan. “It was obvious
straight away. It’s a great book. It’s a great story and it has great characters. It is very cinematic.”
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is the dramatic story of an unsuspecting married couple, Perry (Ewan
McGregor) and Gail (Naomie Harris) on holiday in Marrakech, who meet the flamboyant and
charismatic Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgård). He befriends them over games of tennis and lavish
parties at his villa before revealing he is the top money launderer for the Russian mafia and wants to
defect with his family to Britain. From that moment on, Perry and Gail are thrown into the fractured,
dangerous world of international spies and dirty politics as they endeavour to save Dima and his
family, and ultimately themselves. Indeed, OUR KIND OF TRAITOR captures a very British fascination
with espionage, international double-dealing and Britain’s place in the world.
“It was a very strong, very relatable story,” says producer Simon Cornwell, who is also le
Carré’s son. “An everyman and an everywoman couple caught in a world that overwhelms them and
charts their journey through that. It was a very natural to take to the screen.”
Set in London, Marrakech, Paris, Bern and the French Alps, director Susanna White, whose
breadth of work ranges from Working Title's Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang to HBO's hard-hitting
Generation Kill (about the US invasion of Iraq) to BBC period dramas such as the BAFTA winning
Bleak House, Parade's End and Jane Eyre, was drawn to the very cinematic aspect of the story, as
well as its very contemporary themes. White is one of the few women in the world directing films on
this scale.
“What made this stand out for me was that it is a very modern story,” she explains. “I have
grown up with le Carré and most of his other stories have looked backwards into the past and been
set in a world of darkish interiors. OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is a big road movie, travelling across five
countries.
“It is a le Carré for now,” she continues. “People in MI6 might now be working counterterrorism. I deliberately cast Khalid Abdalla, a Middle Eastern actor, to play Luke, because that is the
MI6 we’ve got now. I hope it will make people think about the world that we live in.”
Damian Lewis, who plays British MI6 agent Hector Meredith, explains it is as much a
character piece as it is a suspenseful thriller. “It’s not a ‘who done it’, it’s more of a ‘can they do it?’”
Adapting the novel for the screen
Hossein Amini is one of the UK’s most accomplished screenwriters, with credits including The Wings
of a Dove, Drive, and an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Two Faces of January, which also
marked his feature film debut as a director. A natural choice to adapt OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, he was
fortunate to be slipped a copy of le Carré’s as-yet-unpublished manuscript by the agent he shares
with le Carré (real name – David Cornwell).
“I loved it from the moment I read it,” declares Amini. “I quickly phoned and said ‘I really
desperately want to do this’. I then had to meet David Cornwell to discuss how to do it and he very
generously said ‘yes I would love you to do it’.”
Amini worked closely with le Carré on the first couple of drafts. “I would write and he’d give
me notes,” says Amini of their collaboration. ‘“John le Carré had always been a big hero of mine so it
was a fantastic opportunity to work with him. It was like meeting a man with an extraordinary brain.
I learnt so much from those two or three days I sat down with him. It was the highlight of my
screenwriting career to exchange ideas and work on the script with him and to talk about ideas. It’s
fantastic when a person lives up to your expectations.”
“As a screenwriter you need collaborators to get the script in the right place,” says Amini.
“Everyone works differently and has different approaches but I got a lot out of working with all
them.”
Le Carré’s characters have long been engrained in the public imagination as the crumpled,
cynical counterparts to the polished dash of James Bond. For the filmmakers, the job at hand was to
craft a feature to fit into the le Carré canon and also to stand out within it.
“There are a lot of expectations about making a le Carré film,” says White. “People imagine
it as people meeting in alleyways, lots of dark interiors, usually a grey- brown world of the past. Part
of my challenge as director was to bring something new to it in exploring the areas I wanted to
explore. But also to make the le Carré fans not feel cheated and to feel they were getting something
that would honour a very specific piece of literature.”
Le Carré’s novels always drill with piercing acuity into the global issues of the day: the
pharmaceutical industry in The Constant Gardener; the war on terror in A Most Wanted Man; in OUR
KIND OF TRAITOR it is private finance and the impact of Russia - specifically Russian money - on the
entire spectrum of British society, from finance to politics to the streets of London, which comes
under scrutiny.
“One of the themes of le Carré’s work is that Britain has almost declined as a world power
but we still have these British values that come from a time when Britain was on top of the world
and had a moral responsibility,” Amini suggests. “As that power has waned, that morality has
turned into something far more like compromise. He is very interested in the impact of the decline
of British power on a moral system. That’s what our film is about. There are those who are willing to
anger the Russian authorities to help this man Dima escape, and there are those who are opposed to
that and are probably working with the Russians, all within the British system.”
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR deftly wraps these weighty issues inside universal imponderables
including what it means to be a man in the 21st century.
“Perry’s character is struggling to define who he is,” says White. “At the start of the movie
he feels lost, his wife is much more successful than he is and his journey is one of redefining himself
as a man, which he discovers on his journey with Dima. We have a couple in crisis needing to heal
and repair their relationship.”
Casting Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris as Perry and Gail
The relationship between the attractive, comfortably-off Perry, a university lecturer in poetics, and
Gail, a very successful barrister, starts in a very broken place. That was an interesting dynamic for
the two actors to play. Everyman superstar Ewan McGregor was the first of the film’s high-powered
cast to join the project. “Ewan was on early and first as Perry,” says producer Gail Egan. “He was
involved from quite an early stage of development and stayed with us through many drafts. He was
perfect.”
McGregor, who boasts an eclectic career with memorable roles in films including Moulin
Rouge, the Star Wars franchise, and most famously as the heroin addict Renton in his break-out film
Trainspotting, plays regular guy Perry, a man in his mid-40s whose life has not turned out how he
hoped it would. He is a little bit lost and looking for a way back to his life, not entirely unlike the
hopeless souls recruited by the Russian mafia in jail to the Vory, a real-life organised crime cohort.
For the actor it was, as always, about the quality of the script. “It’s harder and harder to find
movies like this,” McGregor admits. “But it’s what le Carré does best in that his characters are very
real, very human characters and in this case even more so because he’s put two civilian people into
the world of espionage. He’s plonked them right in the middle of this thriller. That’s interesting
because you think, ‘What would I do in this situation? How would I react?’”
McGregor read the script before going to the book. “Perry is more serious and quiet and
withdrawn in the book and he’s been brought forward a little bit in the screenplay but he’s still quite
a thoughtful, quiet character,” McGregor says. “Gail absolutely holds her own and it’s a very
modern marriage in that respect, there’s nothing traditional about it and there’s no husband and
wife roles. They’re both in this thing together and she gives as good as he does. You see the
consequences of what they’re doing and how it affects both of them. It’s quite nice as it’s quite
unusual.”
For Amini, McGregor is the perfect Perry, dressed in vintage-looking jeans, boots and leather
jackets. “I love the idea of Ewan playing Perry, because as an actor what I’ve always admired in his
work is that there’s an edge and a toughness but there’s also something incredibly vulnerable and
innocent,” says the screenwriter. “Perry is thrown into this world and copes with it pretty heroically
but at same time is almost wide-eyed in his purity and his reaction to the moral compromises and
the darkness in people he is witnessing.
“What’s great about Ewan is that he feels morally so solid,” Amini continues. “You really
sense his outrage and his disappointment in people, but also the toughness and an edge that allows
him also to be an action hero, and that’s required too. It’s that combination that makes him so
ideal.”
Susanna White praises McGregor’s ability to engage with audiences. “He and I talked early
on about the challenges of playing a real relationship of people whose marriage is in trouble,” she
says. “He liked the idea of scrutinizing what it felt like to be slightly emasculated by a wife who’s
more powerful than you are. In theory if you ask Perry whether he thought it would be good to have
high achieving women, he would say ‘of course, women deserve that.’ But when he is faced with his
own situation he starts to feel threatened by Gail and challenged by it. Part of the challenge was
keeping audience appeal while seeing his weakness at the beginning of the film and his journey to
rediscovering himself, who he is and redefining his relationship of with Gail. It was a very interesting
journey with Ewan. He wasn’t afraid to play a character that was weak at the beginning of the film
but who gains in strength.
“The other thing we were both keen on was the idea of a mixed race relationship,” White
continues. “Again it was part of the idea I had to make le Carré feel very modern and very much a
21st century le Carré. You have this wonderful high achieving woman who happens to be black.”
Co-star Naomie Harris describes McGregor as the ideal co-star. “He’s such a phenomenal
actor and just a great guy,” she enthuses. “From the very first moment I met him he was incredibly
down to earth. He has a really great sense of humour and is very hard working.”
McGregor repays Harris the compliment.
“Naomie is a phenomena actress. The relationship is very interesting and layered and
detailed, it’s not a sort of ‘movie’ relationship and they both have their part to play in this story and
how the story unfolds. Their relationship is damaged at the beginning as Perry has cheated on her.
She’s terribly upset and hurt and he’s trying very hard to fix that and to move forward and be happy
again. That’s all really interesting stuff to play as it’s not the usual movie marriage.
“Interestingly, and this is why it’s such good writing, as the deal between Dima and MI6
becomes more chaotic, their relationship mends,” he points out. “The two arcs of those storylines go
hand in hand. Through it all Perry and Gail find each other again and remember what it is they love
about each other. By the time the film ends they are in a much better place.”
For her part, Harris was energised to play a character she recognises as real. Dressed by
costume designer Julian Day as a Hitchcock heroine in plenty of Aquascutum and Burberry, Gail is
struggling with a deep sadness about her husband’s betrayal at the beginning of the film.
“You don’t really see that in most films,” says Harris. “It’s usually the reverse and you see a
couple who aren’t together and are finding their way and it’s lovey-dovey at the end and they get
together and it’s all happily-ever-after. You never see what happens after the happy-ever-after.
“There are bumps in whatever relationship, no matter how good. It is nice to see a mature
relationship which is going through a very serious hiccup and is managing to find a way through.”
Indeed, casting a partner for McGregor was an interesting process. “Gail has her own role
and she drives the story forward at some points, but she also has to support him,” Egan explains.
“She is this feisty lawyer who brings a lot to their relationship, and she makes us want to see them
succeed as a couple. She is obviously desperate to put their relationship back together again while
still trying to make sense of why it went wrong in the first place. She is a very sympathetic character
and it really helps us root for them as a couple.”
Stellan Skarsgård is cast as Dima
Finding the right actor to play Dima was one of the most crucial elements of the project to get right.
“One of the first things that drew me to the project was Dima,” admits White. “When I met
David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, he started acting out Dima for me. He was really funny and
charismatic and warm. You could sense the danger in him, but the big thing David said to me was he
wanted Dima to be funny, and I loved that. I always love surprise in characters that they don’t play
the one note suspected.”
In Stellan Skarsgård, they found an actor capable of embracing this huge character. “He
needed to able to be part crook, part Russian Vory member, and part man of honour,” says Egan.
“We needed someone with international recognition and appeal. Stellan was perfect.”
As kismet would have it, Skarsgård was the actor in Amini’s mind when he was crafting the
character of Dima.
“There is something about his size, his humour and wryness but also an ability to go very
deep emotionally and be very tender and moving in moments of silence,” the writer explains.
“When we finally got to cast him I was thrilled.”
This was a part into which Skarsgård could really get his teeth. “Dima is a money launderer
but he is a Vor with the Vory, a kind of mafia that comes from the prisons in the old Soviet system.
The Vory is an organisation where the State is the enemy and you had to swear never to cooperate
with the State,” he explains. “In the film the modern version of the Vory has started cooperating
with the State and with the Kremlin and those strict borders have been erased. To Dima, an old
warrior, that is outrageous, that is treason. But it also means he is in conflict with the leadership and
it means those people will kill him. And not only him but his family too. Dima is trying to save his
family.”
White and Skarsgård talked a lot about where the actor should take the character. They
decided to place a great deal of emphasis on the notion of Dima as a family man. It was something
Skarsgård, a father of eight children, could easily relate to. Skarsgård’s great achievement is to
convince us this tender figure is also capable of extreme violence.
“We wanted to have a big, warm charismatic guy, who really cares about family, but at the
same time the reality of his life is he’s been out in the gulags, and he is a gangster,” says White.
“Those two things can sit happily together, which is part of the brilliance of Stellan’s acting. He
makes you believe both those things.”
White enjoyed the collaborative relationship she forged with Skarsgård.
“Part of what I love about working with actors is that everyone is different, and everyone
has different needs,” she explains. “Some people need to be filmed at the beginning of the day. They
do their best takes early on. Other people work their way into a scene. The wonderful thing about
Stellan was he had a clear idea about the way he wanted to play Dima, but he always wanted lots of
suggestions as well. He wanted to try scenes lots of ways, so he just goes at it all day long with
incredible energy and focus and good humour. Although you see the intensity in his concentration,
he never lets it get to him either. You get someone of that level and everyone else’s game goes up.
It’s like the best types of tennis players playing together, everyone spurs each other on.”
She relates a telling anecdote about the perfectionist actor: “It was a real coup to get
Stellan. He came to me quite early on and said ‘I’d like to have a closed set.’ I said ‘Yeah that’s fine.’
I was assuming those were for the scenes of nudity in the changing room. But he said, ‘I meant for
the tennis, I’m really embarrassed. I am completely fine with any nudity, I am Scandinavian. But I’m
a terrible, terrible tennis player,’” White laughs. “I said ‘I’m sure it is going to be fine, we will keep
unnecessary people away.’ The first day, the tennis coach said to me, ‘Well, we are making some
progress as Stellan has now stopped running away from the ball.’ He did brilliantly, because he went
from not being able to play tennis to actually looking like Dima enjoys a match now.”
White and Skarsgård put plenty of thought into the character of Dima’s wife, Tamara (Saskia
Reeves) and their marriage. As written, there was very little of Tamara on the page. This gave the
director and her two actors a lot with which to play.
“Stellan and I were interested in Dima’s relationship with Tamara because Perry and Gail
learn from them and they learn about marriage from that relationship,” White points out. “We cast
a fantastic actress, Saskia Reeves, on blind faith. We said to Saskia, ‘This role is really important;
even though if you count your lines in the script, there is hardly anything.’ And Saskia came on that
journey with us.
“I love how real that marriage is,” White continues. “It is one of the remarkable things
about Stellan’s acting, that he created a marriage with virtually no dialogue. By the end of the movie,
Perry and Gail have a marriage that in some ways mirrors Dima and Tamara’s. Even though Dima has
had affairs and not been totally faithful to Tamara there is something completely solid about their
relationship.”
After first meeting on the set of Angels and Demons in 2009, Skarsgård and McGregor were
delighted to be working together again. “When you watch Stellan in Dima’s shoes you just can’t
imagine anyone else playing this part,” says McGregor. “He embodies Dima. He’s such a great actor
and I really am so fond of him as a man.”
The outfits chosen by costume designer Julian Day for Skarsgård were slightly larger than life, and
included a lot of animal skins and unusual fabrics.
“You start out researching what people actually look like and what I found is that people
look quite boring, in a sense that they are not as interesting -looking as cinema would want to see
them,” says Day. “That’s essentially what I did with the Russian Vory. I was quite disappointed when
I started researching what they look like, and there aren’t really that many pictures of them anyway.
Even though they have a lot of wealth they don’t necessarily show that in their clothing. It’s
expensive but not necessarily interesting. It’s not even ostentatious. They look quite tough, but they
don’t look particularly cinematic and we’re making a film here, you need poetic licence.
“So you base yourself in fact to begin with then you create a world that suits the drama and
suits the film and suits the characters. Dima’s bodyguards are dressed more sedately as I wanted to
create a black and white world with Dima standing out.”
Skarsgård describes Day as having a very specific taste. “He takes everything a bit further but with
style,” says the actor. “The costumes in this film, for being a contemporary film are done with a lot
of freedom and a lot of expression which makes it great fun to wear those strange clothes.”
Damian Lewis creates the character of Hector
In le Carré’s novel, the character of Hector Meredith is much older than the actor Susanna White
cast as the veteran M16 agent.
“It was quite a big choice to have Damian and I was thrilled with it. Damian is such a
wonderful actor and has made some very interesting choices himself,” she says. “Hector is a lonely
character. He is divorced and he has a son in jail. Like all of le Carré’s characters, he is flawed. He is
someone seemingly under control but as the film goes on you begin to see the problems in his life.
That is one of the great things about the movie for me, everyone’s got lots of layers to them, there
are lots of shades of grey and there’s no right or wrong. Instead, there is a lot of moral ambiguity.
That is what you get from le Carré.”
Hector is a passionate man who believes the end justifies the means, even using civilians to
achieve his goal. “Hector is really determined and prepared to stop at nothing,” says producer Gail
Egan. “That passion is very infectious on screen and it was a great character for Damian to play.”
Lewis, whose diverse credits include the morally ambiguous US marine Nicholas Brody in TV
series Homeland and King Henry VIII in the BBC’s adaptation of Wolf Hall, sees Hector as a spy
burdened with a conscience. He turned to the book to be able to reach into Hector’s fascinating
backstory which includes a stint as a financier in the City of London. He left when he became
disillusioned by the corruption he found there.
“Hector is a bit of an iconoclast, he rejects conventions and he’s fallen foul of the system
once before, and was cast out in the cold by MI6 before coming back into the service,” says Lewis of
Hector, who Julian Day has dressed in an Aquascutum coat and Oliver Goldsmith glasses, recalling
Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. “When we meet him, we meet a man who is presented with an
opportunity to go after a politician called Aubrey Longrigg MP (Jeremy Northam), a former head of
MI6. Hector believes he is responsible for putting his son in jail. Longrigg is also caught up in a plot
laundering money in the City of London. Hector is presented as a man of principle. He has a strong
moral code but is also possibly a little vengeful.”
Writer Hossein Amini describes Lewis as one of the very best kind of actors. “It makes the
writing and the film so much richer when an actor goes away and makes a character their own
through their research and their own personal experiences and the way they use their costumes,” he
says. “They take something which is two-dimensional on the page and make it three dimensional.
They make the writing look better by doing that. I am always thrilled when an actor says, ‘Thanks for
that part but now I need to go away and turn what you’ve written on the page into a real person’.
That’s when the magic happens. Damian is one of those actors who does that effortlessly.”
As part of his preparation, Lewis was invited to a Special Forces club where he met several
men who work for the Foreign Office abroad. “We talked about their social lives and what drove
them to work for MI6,” Lewis recalls. “Was it a patriotic zeal or an intellectual curiosity about the
work? I tried to ground Hector in my meeting those people who have served.”
Lewis attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama at the same time as Ewan
McGregor (McGregor was in the year ahead) but OUR KIND OF TRAITOR marks the first time the two
British actors have worked together.
“I’ve always wanted to work with Damian and it was great to do this as we have some very
interesting scenes together,” says McGregor. “Perry looks to Hector as a James Bond character but
he also sees his flaws. Hector doesn’t always tell the truth and Perry has to question what’s
happening between them. That’s a great relationship to play.”
Working with director Susanna White
When looking for a director for OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, producer Gail Egan and her partners were
impressed by the different genres White has tackled on screen - from Generation Kill to Nanny
McPhee and the Big Bang to Jane Eyre.
“And this is different again!” says Egan. “She’s a great filmmaker but one of her great
strengths is with cast. They adore her and will go for the extra mile for her. She works very hard and
they notably appreciate it. She recognises what actors need and she creates the environment for
them to express themselves and do it with their own conviction to get underneath the characters
they are playing.”
Damian Lewis talks of the winning relationship White enjoyed with her cast. “She’s got a
very calm, winning energy on set,” he says. “As a director, Susanna is quite happy to leave people
alone to do their thing, so there is a tremendous freedom. But she will always come in and nudge
and steer you if she feels you might be going off track. I would work with her again in a flash.”
One of White’s great strengths is her ability to trust the people who work for her. “I was
given a lot of freedom to go away and write what I wanted,” says Amini. “Susanna was always very
encouraging but never prescriptive.”
“Susanna is so knowledgeable and passionate that she instils that passion in you as the
performers,” adds Naomie Harris. “She’s been great at leading us into this world and getting us to
understand how to play in that world.”
Production designer Sarah Greenwood relished working with a woman. “It was fantastic to
work with a female director,” she asserts. “It’s always very different working with different directors
and what they bring to it. Susanna has a very firm idea of what she wants. When you present
something as an idea, or change something in the script which maybe doesn’t work so well, she’s
very open.”
White partly drew on her experiences working with the marines on Generation Kill to give
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR its thrilling kinetic energy.
“One of the things that drew me to OUR KIND OF TRAITOR was the idea of male violence
and how that defines you or doesn’t define you,” the director explains.
“The part of the process that I really enjoyed was practicing the fight scenes, getting them to
feel as authentic as possible and seeing how that fitted with character. In rehearsals we explored the
different layers of these characters to make them feel as grounded and real as possible. I wanted to
make the fights feel visceral and real, and feel like the acting was balanced on a sixpence. I wanted
to explore the delicacy and emotion in a performance but also the brutality. One moment you are in
the world of a five-star Swiss hotel and the next you go through a door and you’re in a knife fight in a
kitchen. For the fight scenes we spent a lot of time rehearsing and setting up the cameras to get the
best angles. It was a very technical exercise to make it seem simple and real. I love the challenges of
that. It is one of the aspects of my job I love the most.”
White’s emphasis on this delicate balancing act impressed cinematographer Anthony Dod
Mantle and helped to entice the Oscar® and BAFTA winner (for Slumdog Millionaire) aboard the
project.
“In our original meeting Susanna made certain references to family amidst this world of
violence and embezzling and financial exploitation,” he recalls. “The bottom line for Dima, one of
our main characters, is that everything he does is based on what he feels is of worth in his life. This is
not money or luxury apartments but his family and their future and their survival. I liked that
Susanna wanted to make that a significant, underlying element. That Dima, for all his violence and
historical corruption seems an incredibly likeable and adorable and enigmatic person. I think that’s
what’s interesting about the film. I’m not the least bit interested what country you travel to, it’s
about how these people travel in relation to each other and their journeys, particularly Ewan’s
character and certainly Stellan’s journey at the end.”
Skarsgård had never worked with White before. “I called my son Alexander who did
Generation Kill with her, and he said, ‘You would have a lot of fun with her. You can’t say no’,” he
smiles.
Achieving the look of OUR KIND OF TRAITOR
“The wonderful thing about this film is that it enabled me to flex a lot of muscle as a filmmaker,”
says White. “Visually it is an incredible world in terms of location, and intellectually it is very
challenging. I was very lucky that I got this incredible team on board with whom to explore those
incredible ideas. The great thing about doing le Carré is that everyone wants to work on it, so we
were able to get real A-listers in terms of heads of departments to come on board.”
Those A-listers are cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, production designer Sarah
Greenwood and costume designer Julian Day.
The rich textural world of OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is established from the outset by an
opening sequence featuring the dramatic motifs of a ballerina, a forest and snow.
“What I wanted was a strong image of a man suspended in the air,” White explains. “And so
– thinking blue sky because it’s le Carré – I thought, ‘who would I like better than anyone in the
world to do that? Well,’ I thought, ‘Carlos Acosta, who is the perfect image of masculinity’. I emailed
him, and he rang straight back and said ‘I really want to be a part of this, let’s see how we can make
it happen’. It is wonderful doing a le Carré, everyone wants to be a part of it.”
The incredible slow-motion sequence of Acosta was crafted by Dod Mantle.
“I knew if one man in the world could make something extraordinary out of this, take an
idea and make it ten times better, it was Anthony,” says White. ‘It was thrilling to explore the world
of the movie with him.”
Dod Mantle, whose credits include Dogville, Manderlay, Slumdog Millionaire, Rush and 127
Hours, worked with multiple, sometimes hidden, cameras to give each scene a unique perspective.
“Anthony would be hiding cameras everywhere when we were shooting a scene. Sometimes
I wouldn’t even know,” says White. “I would be looking at shots I didn’t even know we had a camera
on because Anthony would be so inventive, and be trying things out all the time. It is great to work
with people at the top of their game.”
Dod Mantle used the small almost-hidden cameras to capture the fast-moving cosmopolitan
world of OUR KIND OF TRAITOR.
“An awful lot of this film is moving,” he says. “I had to structure and package my equipment
and to minimalise the stuff I use, including the lenses, because we had to move so often so fast, so
quickly and in such small spaces.”
OUR KIND OF TRAITOR shot for 10 weeks in spring 2014 in Finland, the UK, Paris, the French
Alps, Bern and Marrakech. It used some 90 sets and filmed in around 50 different locations.
“One of the things I really fought for was to get as many big and dramatic locations into the
movie as I could,” says White. “It was crucial to me that we opened the movie with these big Russian
landscapes, so you feel where that money has come from, you feel the natural resources of Russia,
and to give that sense of scale.”
The Russian exteriors were filmed in Finland, with the interior of the Bolshoi ballet recreated
in London, and The Dorchester hotel standing in for the Bellevue hotel in Bern.
“We never went to the same place twice and we were always moving,” says BAFTA-winning
production designer Sarah Greenwood, whose credits include Atonement, Anna Karenina and Guy
Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. “We were not in any place longer than a day, constantly moving. It was a
bit like a road movie.”
The fast pace of the shoot allowed Dod Mantle to work intuitively, as different characters
encouraged him to move the camera and frame a scene in a certain way.
“I move the camera based on an emotional instinct I have as to where we are in the story
and what the psychological mood of the scene is,” he explains.” It’s a speedy aesthetic. I wouldn’t
call it hand-held as such, it’s like a mixture of something between Steadicam and handheld. It’s a
gliding that allows me to be inquisitive.”
The film reveals worlds within worlds and the different faces of the people who inhabit
them. As the production designer, Sarah Greenwod relished those nuances.
“OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is very expansive,” she says. “I liked the challenge of creating worlds
that we don’t see and worlds that we don’t know. It’s very interesting to see how these societies
work. What we’re seeing in this film is British high society, as well as inside the British government
and banking. They are fascinating worlds to step into.”
CAST BIOGRAPHIES
EWAN MCGREGOR – ‘Perry’
One of the finest, most versatile actors of his generation, McGregor recently made his Broadway
debut as ‘Henry’ in Tom Stoppard's Tony® Award-winning The Real Thing, directed by Sam Gold.
On the big screen, McGregor's upcoming films include dual roles playing both a demon and a holy
man on a journey through the desert, in Rodrigo Garcia's Last Days in the Desert; in Gavin
O'Connor's Jane Got a Gun, he plays the leader of an outlaw gang, alongside Natalie Portman and
Joel Edgerton; he recently wrapped production on the Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, opposite Zoe
Saldana and Don Cheadle, who also directs the film; he will play ‘Lumiere’ in Bill
Condon’s adaptation of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast for Walt Disney Pictures; and he
will star alongside Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning in an adaptation of Philip Roth’s classic
novel American Pastoral, which will also mark McGregor’s debut feature film as director.
Among his more recent film roles was John Wells' adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer and Tony®winning play August: Osage County opposite Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts; The Impossible, a
drama based on a true story of one family's terrifying account of the 2004 tsunami; and Beginners,
opposite Christopher Plummer, based on director Mike Mills' personal story, in which he portrayed a
man coming to terms with his dying father's latent homosexuality; he also garnered a Golden Globe®
nomination as Best Actor for his performance in Lasse Hallström's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
From his breakthrough as the heroin-addicted ‘Mark Renton’ in Trainspotting, to the legendary ‘ObiWan Kenobi’ in the first three episodes of the Star Wars franchise, to starring as ‘Christian’ opposite
Nicole Kidman in the Oscar® and BAFTA award-winning Moulin Rouge, McGregor's career has been
notable for the range and number of bold, daring performances. His film credits include: Steven
Soderbergh’s Haywire; Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer; Amelia, starring Hilary Swank and
Richard Gere; Jack the Giant Slayer; Ron Howard's Angels and Demons with Tom Hanks; I Love You
Phillip Morris opposite Jim Carrey; Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream; biographical drama Miss
Potter; Edward Blum’s Scenes of a Sexual Nature; Marc Forster's supernatural thriller Stay, alongside
Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling; Michael Bay's The Island opposite Scarlett Johansson; animated
films Robots and Valiant; Tim Burton's Big Fish; Young Adam, for which he was nominated for a
London Film Critics Circle Award; Down With Love opposite Renee Zellweger; Ridley Scott's Black
Hawk Down; Rogue Trader; the Golden Globe®-winning Little Voice, alongside Jane Horrocks and
Michael Caine; and Todd Haynes’ glam rock film Velvet Goldmine.
For Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary, McGregor won the Best British Actor Award for the third
consecutive year at the 1997 Empire Awards. For the BAFTA winning Shallow Grave, McGregor was
honoured with the Hitchcock D'Argent Best Actor Award and a Best Actor nomination at the BAFTA
Scotland Awards. On TV, McGregor won an Emmy® for Outstanding Guest Actor for NBC series ER.
McGregor is a devoted and influential philanthropist, and serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for
UNICEF, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing long-term humanitarian and
developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries.
McGregor was born in Perth, Scotland and currently resides in Los Angeles.
STELLAN SKARSGAARD – ‘Dima’
Stellan Skarsgaard is one of the busiest and most versatile actors working today, with a body of work
that spans both independent cinema and Hollywood blockbusters. His work with Lars von Trier
includes Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. For Marvel he has played
‘Dr Erik Selvig’ four times, in two instalments each of both Thor and The Avengers. He also played
‘Bootstrap Bill Turner’ in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and was one of the potential fathers
in the wildly successful Mamma Mia! Other recent high profile roles have included ‘The Grand Duke’
in Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, ‘Martin Vanger’ in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
plus roles in The Railway Man alongside Colin Firth, Hector and the Search For Happiness alongside
Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike, In Order of Disappearance for director Hans Petter Moland, and
King of Devil’s Island for Marius Holst.
A teenage star on Swedish television, he spent 16 years with the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre
and has appeared in more than 80 films.
His forthcoming roles include, for television, the title role in River, created by Abi Morgan, due for
broadcast in autumn 2015.
DAMIAN LEWIS – ‘Hector’
Lewis recently starred in the critically acclaimed London West End stage revival of David Mamet’s
American Buffalo, directed by Daniel Evans, and co-starring John Goodman and Tom Sturridge.
In summer 2015, he began production on the upcoming Showtime television series Billions, starring
opposite Paul Giamatti. The 12-episode series, which revolves around politics and power in the
world of Wall Street and New York investment firms, will premiere in early 2016.
Most recently for TV, Lewis starred as ‘Henry VIII’ opposite Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall, the critically
acclaimed and multi award nominated BBC Two/Masterpiece Theater six-part miniseries adaptation
of Hilary Mantel’s Booker-Prize winning novels, directed by Peter Kosminsky.
In film, Lewis most recently starred opposite Nicole Kidman in Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert,
which had its world premiere at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival and was acquired by Atlas
Distribution; he also stars in The Silent Storm, which had its world premiere at the 2014 BFI London
Film Festival and was recently acquired by Sony Pictures Worldwide Releasing.
Lewis is best known as ‘Sergeant Nicholas Brody’ in Showtime’s Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy
winning hit series Homeland. Lewis’s performance earned him a 2013 Golden Globe Award and a
2012 Primetime Emmy Award for ‘Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series’, among other
accolades.
Other notable television credits include his Golden Globe-nominated performance as World War II
hero ‘Richard Winters’ in the award-winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and his role as
‘Soames Forsyte’ in the acclaimed British production of The Forsyte Saga, Series I and II.
Lewis trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His extensive theatre credits
include ‘Laertes’ in Jonathan Kent’s Broadway production of Hamlet, opposite Ralph Fiennes; Five
Gold Rings, opposite Helen McCrory; The Misanthrope, opposite Keira Knightley; and the National
Theatre’s production of Ibsen's Pillars of the Community.
NAOMIE HARRIS – ‘Gail’
Naomie Harris is a critically acclaimed actress in film, television, and theatre.
Most recently, Harris reprised her role as 'Miss Moneypenny' in Spectre, the 24th installment of the
James Bond franchise, opposite Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes and Christoph Waltz. She first played
‘Moneypenny’ for director Sam Mendes in Skyfall, which won the 2013 BAFTA Film Award for
Outstanding British Film and went on to be Sony Pictures’ highest grossing film ever with a
worldwide box office of over $918 million.
Harris recently completed production on Andy Serkis’s Jungle Book: Origins, adapted from the
Rudyard Kipling novel about an orphaned boy raised by animals in the wild. She plays She-wolf
‘Nisha’ alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, who also lend their
voices to the film, which is slated to be released by Warner Bros in October 2017.
Other recent on screen appearances include her role in Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw, alongside Jake
Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams and Forest Whitaker, as a social worker who tries to reunite a former
middleweight boxing champion with his daughter after the tragic loss of his wife leaves his life
spiraling out of control. Prior to that, she starred in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom opposite Idris
Elba. For her performance as Mandela's controversial second wife ‘Winnie’, Harris was nominated
for two London Critics Circle Awards and an NAACP Image Award.
The London-born actress first broke through in 2002 with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, going on to
further international recognition and a BAFTA Orange Rising Star nomination for her role as the
voodoo witch ‘Tia Dalma’ in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the
Caribbean: At World's End. Other major feature film credits include Michael Mann's Miami Vice;
Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story; Street Kings with Keanu Reeves and
Forrest Whittaker; Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll with Andy Serkis; and Justin Chadwick’s The First
Grader.
Harris starred in Danny Boyle's production of Frankenstein opposite Benedict Cumberbatch and
Jonny Lee Miller at London’s National Theatre. For television, she was awarded Best Actress at The
Royal Television Society Awards in 2010 for her role in the BBC's Small Island. Her other TV credits
include Blood and Oil, the popular UK television adaptation of Zadie Smith's bestselling novel White
Teeth, Poppy Shakespeare and Peter Kosminsky's The Project.
Harris graduated with honours from Cambridge University with a degree in 'Social and Political
Science', and then trained at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
JEREMY NORTHAM – ‘Aubrey Longrigg’
Jeremy Northam is an award winning actor whose body of work spans film, theatre and television.
Northam starred as ‘Ivor Novello’ in Robert Altman’s critically acclaimed ensemble Gosford Park, for
which the cast won a number of awards including the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding
Performance by the Cast of a Theatrical Motion Picture. His performance in David Mamet’s The
Winslow Boy earned him the British Performance Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
He was also won the London Critics Circle Award for British Actor of the Year for his performances in
The Winslow Boy, Mark Illsley's Happy Texas and Oliver Parker’s An Ideal Husband.
His other film credits include Dean Spanley alongside Peter O’Toole and Sam Neill, Creation, The
Invasion, Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story, Guy X, Stroke of Genius, The Statement, The
Singing Detective, Neil LaBute’s Possession, Michael Apted’s Enigma, Merchant Ivory's The Golden
Bowl, The Misadventures of Margaret, Irwin Winkler’s The Net, Emma directed by Douglas McGrath,
Steven Spielberg’s Amistad, as well as Voices from a Locked Room, Wuthering Heights, and
Christopher Hampton’s Carrington.
On stage, Northam was the recipient of the prestigious Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer
for his performance as Edward Voysey in London’s National Theatre revival of The Voysey
Inheritance. He also received wide recognition for playing ‘Hamlet’ for director Richard Eyre at the
National, and in The Shaughan and School for Scandal. For the Royal Shakespeare Company he
appeared in The Country Wife, Love's Labour's Lost and The Gift of the Gorgon. Further stage
performances include the acclaimed Certain Young Men for the Almeida Theatre and Old Times for
the Donmar Warehouse, as well as Three Sisters and The Way of the World.
Northam has been seen on television most recently playing ‘Charles II’ in Channel 4’s New Worlds,
and in the BBC mini-series White Heat. His other television roles include Miami Medical for Warner
Bros Television in the US, Stephen Poliakoff’s feature film Glorious 39, the one-off BBC drama Fiona’s
Story, the award-winning series The Tudors, and playing ‘Dean Martin’ in the CBS biopic Martin &
Lewis, opposite Sean Hayes’ ‘Jerry Lewis’.
In 2016 he will appear in The Crown, a new series for Netflix, about Queen Elizabeth II and the prime
ministers who shaped post-war Britain, based on Peter Morgan’s play The Audience.
KHALID ABDALLA – ‘Luke’
Khalid Abdalla’s forthcoming work includes the feature In the Last Days of the City, directed by
Tamer El Said for Zero Production.
Khalid was a central part of Jehane Noujaim's Oscar® and Emmy-nominated documentary The
Square (Al Midan). He is a producer on the upcoming feature documentary The Vote by Hanan
Abdalla and Cressida Trew. He is also a founding member of the Mosireen Collective, an
independent Citizens’ Journalism Lab in Cairo, and Cimatheque, a film centre dedicated to
celebrating film from the region and beyond.
Previous screen work includes: The Narrow Frame of Midnight, directed by Tala Hadid for
Autonomous; Green Zone, directed by Paul Greengrass for Working Title; the Oscar®-nominated The
Kite Runner, directed by Marc Forster for Dreamworks, and the Oscar®-nominated United 93,
directed by Paul Greengrass for Working Title.
Other work includes Tamburlaine at The Rose Theatre, Cue Deadly at The Riverside Studios,
Bedbound for which he shared the Judges’ Award for Acting at NSDF, and BBC Radio Three’s The
Incomplete Recorded Works of a Dead Body, winner of the 2008 Prix Italia for Best Drama.
In 2010 he won a Special Recognition for Achievement in Cinema Award from the Cairo International
Film Festival.
MARK GATISS – ‘Billy Matlock’
Mark Gatiss has a long and varied career as an actor as well as a writer and producer behind the
camera.
Mark's great early success on television was as part of the BAFTA-winning comedy troupe The
League of Gentlemen, where he both wrote and appeared onscreen.
Recent TV credits as an actor include roles in the hugely acclaimed BBC Two / Masterpiece Theatre
adaptation of Wolf Hall, Game of Thrones, Mapp & Lucia and as British politician ‘Peter Mandelson’
in TV film Coalition. He will soon be seen on the big screen in the feature film adaptation of British
TV comedy classic Dad’s Army, and in Victor Frankenstein for 20th Century Fox alongside James
McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe.
Like Steven Moffat, Gatiss is one of the few writers to have written for all four Doctors in the
modern television revival of Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith and
Peter Capaldi). Mark was also the writer and executive producer of An Adventure in Space and Time,
a 90 minute dramatisation of the genesis of the series as part of Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary
celebrations in 2013.
Gatiss is also the co-creator and executive producer of Sherlock, the hit BBC series starring Benedict
Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. In the series he also plays Sherlock’s brother ‘Mycroft
Holmes’. Sherlock has seen unprecedented success across the globe, with series 3 in 2014 billed as
the most watched drama on British television in a decade, and also winning seven Emmys. The 90minute Sherlock special was filmed in January 2015.
Mark's other writing credits for television include episodes of Nighty Night (2004-2005), the ghost
story miniseries Crooked House (2008) which he also executive produced, three episodes of Agatha
Christie’s Poirot, his adaptation of HG Wells' The First Men in the Moon (2010), and the documentary
series A History of Horror (2010) and its sequel Horror Europa (2012), all of which he also presented.
SASKIA REEVES – ‘Tamara’
Since graduating from London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Saskia Reeves has built a
formidable body of work across film, theatre and television.
Her acclaimed television work includes many productions for the BBC - Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall,
with Mark Rylance directed by Peter Kosminsky; From There to Here written by Peter
Bowker; Wallander alongside Kenneth Branagh; Luther with Idris Elba; and Channel 4’s acclaimed
production of Red Riding: 1983, adapted from the novel by David Peace.
On film she has worked with directors including David Hare on Page 8 and Salting the
Battlefield; Michael Winterbottom on Butterfly Kiss; Stephen Poliakoff on Close My Eyes; and
Thaddeus O’Sullivan on December Bride.
Her extensive theatre credits include The Mistress Contract at The Royal Court, Hello and Goodbye at
Trafalgar Studios, A Disappearing Number for Complicite, Orpheus Descending for Nicholas Hytner at
the Donmar Warehouse, Much Ado About Nothing for Declan Donnelan (Cheek By Jowl), and many
other roles for directors including Mike Leigh and Steven Berkoff.
ALICIA VON RITTBERG – ‘Natasha’
Alicia has been working consistently in Germany from a young age. Credits include Christian
Petzold's Barbara and Romy with Thomas Kretschmann, and most recently David Ayer's Fury with
Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Logan Lerman, which closed the 2014 London Film Festival.
MARK STANLEY – ‘Ollie’
Mark Stanley is best known for playing Grenn in 22 episodes of HBO’s fantasy hit Game of Thrones.
Trained at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Stanley’s theatre experience includes
Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse, Events While Guarding the Bofors and Tis a Pity She’s a
Whore. In film, Stanley has had roles in Captain America, How I Live Now, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner,
and Kajaki.
He can soon be seen in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, and in major new BBC drama
Dickensian, shooting in 2015, in which he plays ‘Bill Sikes’ opposite Anton Lesser, Tuppence
Middleton, Stephen Rea and Pauline Collins.
GRIGORIY DOBRYGIN – ‘The Prince Nicolas Petrov’
Grigoriy Dobrygin is a Russian film and theatre actor and director.
He was born in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky-50, a closed military town in the very East of the USSR. As
a child, he studied for seven years in the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre Ballet School, and later at
Zaokskaya Christian Academy for two years, before graduating from the Moscow Theatre Art
Academy (GITIS).
Grigoriy won both the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, and was given the
laureate of the Russian Guild of Film Critics (a special prize), for his role in Aleksey Popogrebskiy’s
How I Ended This Summer. Most recently he played the title role in Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of
John le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man, alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman and opposite Rachel
McAdams. His other film credits as an actor include Black Sea for Kevin Macdonald, Territory
(Territoria) for director Alexander Melnik, 4 Days in May for director Achim von Borries, and The
Black Lightning (Chernaya Molniya) for producer Timur Bekmambetov.
Forthcoming roles include playing Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia in Aleksey Uchitel’s
Matilda, and also Grain for director Semih Kaplanoglu.
His directorial debut is the short film An Affair (Izmena), which won Second Prize at the 2013
Kinotavr Film Fest in Sochi, Russia.
FILMMAKER BIOGRAPHIES
SUSANNA WHITE – Director
Twice Emmy-nominated director Susanna White is highly prolific, recognised for her work on BAFTA
award-winning series, and known for her wide-ranging body of work with some of the world's top
writers from Tom Stoppard to David Simon.
In 2013 she directed the critically acclaimed Parade’s End (BBC/HBO), adapted for television from
the novels by Ford Madox Ford by Sir Tom Stoppard, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and
Rebecca Hall. Previously for HBO she directed David Simon's Generation Kill, the true story of a
group of US recon marines spearheading the invasion of Iraq, which was nominated for 11 Emmy®
awards including Outstanding Directing.
She made her debut feature film Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang for Working Title Films. Written by
and starring Emma Thompson, the film also features Maggie Gyllenhall, Dame Maggie Smith, Ralph
Fiennes, Ewan McGregor and Rhys Ifans. It was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Film in the children's
category.
White was lauded for her six episodes of Bleak House for the BBC, winning a host of international
broadcast awards including the BAFTA and RTS awards for Best Drama Serial. From this, White went
on to direct another highly-regarded drama series for the BBC, Jane Eyre, which earned her an
Emmy® nomination.
White’s early career includes award winning Volvo City about the Hasidic Jewish community of north
London and the BAFTA and Emmy nominated Tell me the Truth About Love (about WH Auden).
HOSSEIN AMINI – Screenwriter
Hossein Amini is a film writer who was nominated for an Oscar® for his adaptation of Henry James'
classic novel Wings of a Dove, which starred Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache and Alison Elliott.
He has also wrote the screenplay for Jude, adapted from Thomas Hardy’s novel, starring Kate
Winslet and Christopher Eccleston, which won the Edinburgh International Film Festival prize for
Best British Film, and has worked on Gangs of New York, starring Daniel Day Lewis and Leonardo
DiCaprio, and The Four Feathers starring Heath Ledger.
In 2011 he wrote the screenplay for Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Ryan
Gosling and Carey Mulligan, which screened In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival before going
on to secure numerous awards the world over, including a nomination for Best Film at the BAFTAs.
In 2014 Hossein made his directorial debut with his own adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Two
Faces of January, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.
He is currently working on The Alienist for Paramount and McMafia for Cuba Pictures.
JOHN LE CARRÉ – Author
John le Carré was born in 1931. After being educated at the Universities of Bern and Oxford, he went
on to teach at Eton before becoming an MI5 officer. In 1960, he was transferred to MI6, the foreign
intelligence service, and worked under “Second Secretary” cover in the British Embassy at Bonn.
It was during this period that he discovered his passion for writing, publishing Call for the Dead in
1961 and A Murder of Quality in 1962 before writing what is largely considered to be one of the
great novels of the twentieth century, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The novel launched his
career and in 1964, le Carré left the service to devote himself to writing.
A number of le Carré's novels have been adapted for the screen, starting with The Spy Who Came in
from the Cold in 1966, starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. In 1979, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,
Spy was adapted for BBC TV as a seven part series starring Alec Guinness. The BBC later
adapted Smiley's People for TV in 1982, also starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. A number of
film adaptations followed, most recently the 2011 adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring
Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt and Mark Strong, and 2014’s A Most Wanted Man,
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his last roles before his untimely death.
2016, the 50th anniversary of the release of the film of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, will see
the release both of Our Kind of Traitor on the big screen and of the six-hour television adaptation of
The Night Manager, directed by Susanne Bier and starring Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, Olivia
Colman, Elizabeth Debicki and Tom Hollander.
John le Carré is one of the most respected and prolific writers of his generation and continues to
produce some of the most important novels being published today.
GAIL EGAN – Producer
Gail Egan is a qualified barrister and practised commercial law at Lincoln's Inn before joining Price
Waterhouse Corporate Finance.
She then worked for the International Media Group Carlton Communications. In 2000 she formed
the independent production company Potboiler Productions with Simon Channing Williams. In 2009
Potboiler Productions joined forces with Slate Films, run by Andrea Calderwood.
She has produced or executive produced seventeen films including Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner, Another
Year, Happy-Go-Lucky and Vera Drake; Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener and Blindness; A
Most Wanted Man, adapted from John le Carré’s novel and directed by Anton Corbijn, A Little
Chaos directed by Alan Rickman, Man About Dog with Paddy Breathnach, and Brothers of the
Head with Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe.
Gail is currently producing Trespass Against Us, directed by Adam Smith and starring Michael
Fassbender, Rory Kinnear and Brendan Gleeson, which wrapped photography in 2014.
STEPHEN CORNWELL – Producer
Stephen co-founded The Ink Factory in 2010 with his brother Simon. After working as an award
winning photojournalist, Stephen moved to California in the late 1980s to join the MA program at
the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema. His graduate film led to him directing a
couple of independent features and a TV movie for Showtime, before Stephen focused on his work
as a screenwriter. In the following 15 years Stephen wrote for most of the major Hollywood studios,
working with numerous directors and producers including Ridley Scott, Guy Ritchie, Kathleen
Kennedy, Joel Silver, Doug Liman, Frank Marshall, Thomas Tull and Lorenzo di Bonaventura. With his
writing partner Oliver Butcher, Stephen co-wrote 2011's Unknown starring Liam Neeson. With The
Ink Factory, in addition to producing Our Kind of Traitor, Stephen produced Anton Corbijn’s 2014
adaption of A Most Wanted Man, co-wrote and produced Message from the King, directed by
Fabrice du Welz and starring Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Teresa Palmer and Alfred Molina (to
be released in 2016), produced Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk based on the novel by Ben
Fountain and starring Joe Alwyn, Steve Martin, Kristen Stewart, Garret Hedlund, Chris Tucker and
Vin Diesel (also to be released in 2016), and executive produced The Night Manager, a six-part
television series for broadcast in 2016, in collaboration with The BBC and AMC, directed by Susanne
Bier and starring Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Debicki and Tom Hollander.
With The Ink Factory’s sister company, Giant Squid, Stephen has also produced Abzu, a new
narrative interactive video game from multi-award-winning creator Matt Nava, for release on PS4
and PC in 2016. Abzu was the recipient of multiple awards at this year’s E3 in Los Angeles.
SIMON CORNWELL – Producer
Simon Cornwell founded The Ink Factory with his brother Stephen in 2010. Their first production
was A Most Wanted Man, directed by Anton Corbijn, adapted from the novel by John le Carré, and
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. Another le Carré adaptation, The Night Manager, is being
produced as a six part television series for broadcast in 2016, in collaboration with the BBC and
AMC, directed by Susanne Bier and starring Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth
Debicki and Tom Hollander. The company has two other feature films in post-production: Message
from the King, directed by Fabrice Du Welz and starring Teresa Palmer, Luke Evans and Tom Felton,
and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, directed by Ang Lee, and starring Kristen Stewart, Vin Diesel
and Garrett Hedlund. The Ink Factory’s sister company Giant Squid will release Abzu, a new narrative
game from multi-award-winning creator Matt Nava, on the Playstation 4, Steam and other platforms
during 2016.
ANTHONY DOD MANTLE – Director of Photography
Anthony Dod Mantle has worked around the world on many critically acclaimed films, collaborating
with some of the most exciting directors in modern cinema including Lars Von Trier, Thomas
Vinterberg, Danny Boyle and Kevin Macdonald. The sheer variety of Anthony’s work, from The
Celebration, Dogville and Manderlay to 28 Days Later, The Last King of Scotland and 127 Hours is
testament to his creativity and talent.
For Slumdog Millionaire, Anthony won the Academy Award®, a BAFTA, an ASC Award, a BIFA and the
Golden Frog at Camerimage. For The Last King of Scotland, Anthony received The Evening Standard
Technical Achievement Award and Best Cinematography at the Stockholm Film Festival. For
Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, Anthony received a BAFTA Craft Award. Anthony has also
been nominated four times for Best Cinematography at the European Film Awards, winning for
Dogville and 28 Days Later. More recently, Anthony has collaborated extensively with director Ron
Howard, working on both Rush and In the Heart of the Sea. He has just completed filming Oliver
Stone’s Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley. Born in the United Kingdom,
Anthony now lives in Copenhagen with his wife and family.
TARIQ ANWAR – Editor
Tariq Anwar learnt his craft by cutting a huge array of programmes for almost every department
during 18 years at the BBC. From the News department, to Music and Arts, to the History and
Geographic channels, Tariq worked on an extremely tight schedule, and the lessons he learnt in
terms of storytelling, structure and how to make fast decisions were invaluable to his later
work. Tariq has since cut a diverse selection of feature films and television dramas and has won and
been nominated for multiple awards. He won the European Editor Film award for his work on The
King’s Speech, for which he also received nominations for the Academy Awards®, BAFTA and ACE
awards in 2011. Other recent feature film work includes The Lady in the Van, Curve, Libertador,
Great Expectations, Hussein Who Said No, Law Abiding Citizen, The Other Man, Revolutionary Road,
The Good Shepherd, Stage Beauty and Sylvia, as well as American Beauty, for which he was
nominated for an Academy Award® and an ACE award, and for which he won the BAFTA for Best
Editor. He also won BAFTAs for television dramas Oppenheimer and Caught on a Train, and was
nominated for The Madness of King George, Summer’s Lease, Fortune’s War, The Monocled
Mutineer and Tender Is the Night.
LUCIA ZUCHETTI – Editor
Lucia Zucchetti, ACE has worked on some of the most creative and stylistically original British
independent films of the last ten years. She began her career cutting Lynne Ramsay’s award winning
short films Small Deaths (Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 1996) and Gasman (Jury Prize, Cannes Film
Festival, 1998, and Scottish BAFTA for Best Short Film, 1997).
Lucia went on to work with Lynne Ramsay on the award-winning feature films Ratcatcher and
Morvern Callar. Other credits include director Jamie Thraves’ The Low Down and Michael Radford’s
The Merchant of Venice.
In 2007 Lucia cut Boy A for director John Crowley, for which she won a BAFTA for Best Editing. Lucia
and John had previously worked together on his award winning debut feature film Intermission.
Chéri marked the beginning of a long collaboration with Stephen Frears, for whom she has cut The
Deal, Mrs Henderson Presents and The Queen, for which Lucia received BAFTA, American Cinema
Editors Guild and European Academy nominations in 2007.
Lucia worked with director Tina Gharavi on I Am Nasrine, nominated for the Douglas Hickox Award
at the BIFAs and for Outstanding Debut at the BAFTAs, and then with director Jay Roach on Game
Change, staring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson, which won TV Program of the Year at the AFI
Awards and The Critics Choice Television Award for Best Television Movie/Miniseries.
More recently, Lucia collaborated again with John Crowley on Working Title’s Closed Circuit, and
edited James Kent’s Testament of Youth starring Kit Harington, Dominic West and Alicia Vikander.
Her next project will be Their Finest Hour and a Half with director Lone Scherfig.
SARAH GREENWOOD – Production Designer
Sarah Greenwood is a four-time Academy Award®-nominated production designer, earning her most
recent nod for her work on Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, for which she also won an Art Directors
Guild Award, a European Film Award, an Evening Standard British Film Award and a Hollywood Film
Award, among other honours. She received two previous Oscar® nominations, for her work with
director Joe Wright on his acclaimed period films Pride & Prejudice and Atonement (for which she
won a BAFTA), and one for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. She was honoured at the 2008 Hollywood
Film Festival as Production Designer of the Year.
Greenwood has also collaborated with Joe Wright on the films Hanna and The Soloist, and the
television miniseries Nature Boy, Bodily Harm and The Last King, for which she received a BAFTA TV
Award nomination.
Greenwood’s other credits include the features Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Starter for 10, Born
Romantic, This Year’s Love, The Governess and A Merry War, which marked her film debut.
Born in England, Greenwood graduated with a BA from the Wimbledon School of Art, and began her
career designing for the stage. Segueing to the screen, she went on to work at the BBC, becoming a
senior designer, working on the establishing series of Later... with Jools Holland and many other
drama, music and arts programmes. She also won a Royal Television Society Award and received a
BAFTA TV Award nomination for her production design work on the award winning BBC series The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
She is currently working on Bill Condon’s adaptation of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast,
scheduled for release by Walt Disney Studios in 2017.
JULIAN DAY – Costume Designer
Julian Day is one of Britain's most talented costume designers. Recently he has collaborated three
times with director Ron Howard: on the biopic of Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda, Rush; on 19th
century whaling adventure In the Heart of the Sea starring Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy and
Brendan Gleeson; and most recently on Inferno, the third instalment of Dan Brown’s hugely
popular series of books, starring Tom Hanks. Other recent credits include Diana starring Naomi
Watts, Dom Hemingway starring Jude Law, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen for director Lasse
Hallstrom, and Berberian Sound Studio featuring Toby Jones, directed by Peter Strickland.
Day began designing films in the early 1990s. He likes to take on varied work in terms of budgets,
periods and scale, particularly relishing the research process. Other notable film credits include
Nowhere Boy, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Brighton Rock and Kicks.
On the smaller screen he has designed costumes for television movies Page Eight, Poppy
Shakespeare, Dis/Connected and the mini-series Demons. He has also designed costumes for
several high profile British television series including Britz, Hex, Murder City and Wire in the Blood.
FAE HAMMOND – Makeup & Hair Designer
Fae Hammond is a much in demand makeup & hair designer with a formidable list of credits across
big and small screen. An Emmy® winner for Elizabeth I, and twice BAFTA nominated (Pride and
Prejudice in the BAFTA Film Awards and Elizabeth I in the BAFTA TV Awards), her notable film credits
include The Book Thief, Ron Howard’s Rush, Kick-Ass, Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, Richard Linklater’s Me and
Orson Welles, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, Stardust, Layer Cake with Daniel Craig, A Knight’s Tale
starring Heath Ledger, Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth. Her television credits
include Zen and Doctor Zhivago starring Keira Knightley and Sam Neill. Her forthcoming projects
include Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea and David Yates’ Tarzan.
MARCELO ZARVOS – Composer
Brazilian-born Marcelo Zarvos (The Affair, Ray Donovan) burst onto the indie film landscape in 2001
with his score for Kissing Jessica Stein, followed in 2004 by The Door in the Floor, adapted from the
John Irving novel A Widow for One Year.
Though Zarvos began by studying classical music, in his teens he started to delve into jazz and world
music. This expansion of influence helped to create Zarvos’s trademark sound - a seamless blend of
classical, orchestral, rock, electronic and various ethnic and folk elements, together creating
uniquely affecting and emotionally charged music.
Zarvos, who earned his BFA from Cal Arts, was named one of the 25 New Faces of Indie Film in 2004
by FilmMaker Magazine. His other film credits include Enough Said, The Good Shepherd, The Words,
Brooklyn’s Finest, The Face of Love, Reaching for the Moon (Flores Raras), Sin Nombre and
Hollywoodland. Zarvos has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards (for You Don’t Know
Jack and Taking Chance) and two HMMA Awards (for Brooklyn’s Finest and Enough Said. His other
television work includes The Big C and the HBO movie Phil Spector.
Zarvos’s upcoming projects include Rock the Kasbah (directed by Barry Levinson with an all-star cast
including Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson and Bill Murray), the sci-fi thriller Cell (starring Samuel L. Jackson
and John Cusack), and American Ultra (starring Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg).
Non film works include three critically acclaimed albums released by MA Recordings, Dualism, Music
Journal and Labyrinths, which mix various world music styles with modern classical and jazz
instruments. Other works include dance scores for Pilobolus, DanceBrazil, Cleo Parker Robinson,
ODC Dance, and chamber music compositions for Ethel and Quintet of the Americas. Zarvos has
received grants from Meet the Composer, New York State Council for the Arts and The National
Endowment for the Arts. His Cirque Musica Suite was premiered in 2011 by the San Diego Symphony
and subsequently performed by the San Francisco and Houston Symphony Orchestras. He currently
splits time between his homes in New York and Los Angeles.
LUCY BEVAN – Casting Director
After training with legendary British casting director Mary Selway, Lucy Bevan established herself as
one of the UK’s foremost and in demand casting directors. Her credits include Cinderella for director
Kenneth Branagh, Mr. Holmes for Bill Condon, Walt Disney Studios’ Maleficent starring Angelina
Jolie, Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet starring Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay and Maggie Smith, The
Hundred-Foot Journey featuring Helen Mirren, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, One Day
and An Education - both for director Lone Scherfig, and The Duchess starring Keira Knightley and
Ralph Fiennes.
In 2015 she cast a season of plays in London’s West End for the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company,
including The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet and John Osborne’s The Entertainer, and featuring a
repertory company including Judi Dench, Zoe Wanamaker, Derek Jacobi, Rob Brydon, Richard
Madden and Lily James.