Direct from its recent world premiere at the London Film Festival, this epic coming of age war tale is based on Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I which eighty years on, remains one of the most powerful and famous memoirs of the 20th Century.
The young Vera Brittain, played by the captivating Alicia Vikander (Anna Karenina), an irrepressible, intelligent and free-minded woman who overcomes the prejudices of her family and hometown to win a scholarship to Oxford. With everything to live for, she falls in love with her brother’s close friend Roland Leighton and together they pursue their literary dreams. But the First World War brings everything to a grinding halt, and tears the couple apart. As Vera experiences the heartbreak of one by one losing the most important men in her life, and of the horrors of working as a nurse to wounded soldiers, she determinedly resolves to create a world in which such a war can never take place again.
New York Times called Brittain’s autobiographical account “honest… revealing…heartbreakingly beautiful”, and director James Kent has bought this to life with breathtaking drama and sensitivity.