Another View 2015 / Nightingale / USA 2014
A war veteran with a trivial job and an even more trivial life begins to unravel in his house as he succumbs increasingly to his psychological woes. Director Elliott Lester stages this study of advancing madness as a minimalist solo performance by well-known British actor David Oyelowo.
Peter has lived through war, but the best he can do now is to package eggs at the supermarket. On top of it all, his boss yells at him for being a few minutes late. At home, he has to contend with his strict mother, who forbids him from having guests over. We learn all this largely from the protagonist’s articulate monologues, as he speaks either into a computer or on the telephone, or into the emptiness of his room. In the end, Peter manages to get rid of his mother, but when he invites his friend Edward over for dinner he runs up against negative vibes from Edward’s wife. What’s more, Peter must now deal with worried phone calls from his mother’s friends. In the HBO-produced Nightingale, director Elliot Lester and actor David Oyelowo opted for a challenging approach reminiscent of theatre that emphasizes the main character’s claustrophobic state of mind. Oyelowo, who excelled in the Oscar-winning Selma (2014), gives a masterful performance that earned him accolades from American television critics, who awarded him their Critics’ Choice Award.
Šimon Šafránek
83 min / Color, HD CAM
European premiere
Director Elliott Lester
/ Screenplay Frederick Mensch
/ Dir. of Photography Pieter Vermeer
/ Music Mark D. Todd
/ Editor Nicholas Wayman-Harris
/ Art Director Mark Blatchford, Scott Falconer, Caitlin Reilly
/ Producer Josh Weinstock, Katrina Wolfe, Elliott Lester, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner
/ Production HBO Films
/ Coproduction Plan B Entertainment, BN Films
/ Cast David Oyelowo, Barlow Jacobs, Heather Storm
/ Sales HBO Entertainment
/ Contact HBO Europe
Elliott Lester (London) started out directing music videos and television commercials, for which he won several prestigious awards including a Cannes Lion. He debuted in 2006 with his drama Love Is the Drug (which premiered at Slamdance) about a group of high-school graduates who experiment with anything and everything. His next film was the action thriller Blitz (2011), starring Jason Statham as a hard-nosed British copper who teams up with an unpopular colleague in search of a cop-killer. In 2014, Lester worked on the television series “Chop Shop.”
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Ondřej Zach
Film Institution Rep., Producer
Tereza Polachová
Producer
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