"EASTERN PROMISES"

“Eastern Promises”, the highly acclaimed film selected to open the London Film Fest, neatly underlines the international nature of today’s cinema business.

It is set in London so you might easily expect a long list of Brits to be involved.

Instead it is the story of a Russian mobster directed by a Canadian with a cast spanning the globe from France, leading man Viggo Mortensen, to Australia in the form of Naomi Watts (getting to know each other better in the main photo, and Watts alone above).

Yet there at the centre of it, the man credited for the script is Marlborough’s own Steve Knight.

Or as the writer of the more recent period piece “Amazing Grace”, where 18th century British nobility came to the rescue of slave trade victims.

But “Eastern Promises” seems a distinct advance on both these pieces in pace and complexity. Which perhaps explains why 48 year Knight now has the confidence to take on his next piece, for Tony Scott, called “Emma’s War”.

This story takes Knight away from London for the first time and to a very different world, detailing the traumas of a British aid worker in the Sudan who marries a warlord bent on controlling part of the country.

Filed September 11, 2007