EMPIRE OF LIGHT

From Academy Award®-winning director and writer Sam Mendes, EMPIRE OF LIGHT is a moving drama about the power of human connection during turbulent times. Set in and around a faded old cinema in an English coastal town in the early 1980s, it follows Hilary (Olivia Colman) a cinema manager struggling with her mental health, and Stephen (Micheal Ward), a new employee who longs to escape this provincial town in which he faces daily adversity. Both Hilary and Stephen find a sense of belonging through their unlikely and tender relationship and come to experience the healing power of music, cinema, and community.

 Written and directed by Sam Mendes. The film features a stellar cast led by Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward, Tom Brooke, Tanya Moodie, Hannah Onslow, Crystal Clarke, with Toby Jones, and Colin Firth.

Mendes says ““Hilary is a middle-aged woman who lives alone on the coast and has worked in the cinema for a few years,” Mendes explains. “She has a complicated past and some demons of her own but, in the way that ad hoc families can support each other, she has been embraced by this eccentric bunch that work in the cinema. She’s struggling to find a meaningful relationship in her life, when Stephen, who is open-hearted and gentle but still very young, also comes to work there.” 

Shot on location in Margate, including Dreamland.