Mike Leigh announces the subject of his new film | Little White Lies

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Mike Leigh announces the sub­ject of his new film

17 Apr 2015

Words by Sophie Monks Kaufman

Elderly man with white beard wearing green jacket gesturing against mountainous landscape.
Elderly man with white beard wearing green jacket gesturing against mountainous landscape.
The vet­er­an British film­mak­er looks set to get polit­i­cal with his lat­est project.

Almost a year on from the world pre­mière of Mike Leigh’s mas­ter­ful Mr Turn­er, the revered British writer/​director has announced the sub­ject of his next fea­ture-length project.

Leigh’s as-yet-unti­tled film will look at the infa­mous Peter­loo Mas­sace that took place on 16 August, 1819, in which 18 work­ing peo­ple were killed and a fur­ther 700 injured at the hands of gov­ern­ment forces dur­ing a peace­ful pro-democ­ra­cy ral­ly at St Peter’s Field in Man­ches­ter. Shoot­ing in 2017, the film will reunite Leigh with pro­duc­er Georgina Lowe and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dick Pope.

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Of the project, Leigh has said: ​“There has nev­er been a fea­ture film about the Peter­loo Mas­sacre. Apart from the uni­ver­sal polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of this his­toric event, the sto­ry has a par­tic­u­lar per­son­al res­o­nance for me, as a native of Man­ches­ter and Salford.”

‘Peter­loo’ will be Leigh’s fourth peri­od fea­ture, fol­low­ing Top­sy-Turvy, Vera Drake and Mr Turn­er, and promis­es to be anoth­er seri­ous pas­sion project from the 72 year old. Get those bets in ear­ly for the 2018 awards season.

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