Daniel Mays (Line Of Duty, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Public Enemies) stars in BBC Two's powerful factual drama as Peter Wildeblood, a thoughtful and private gay journalist whose lover Eddie McNally (played by newcomer to television, Richard Gadd), under pressure from the authorities, turned Queen's evidence against him in one of the most explosive court cases of the 1950s - the infamous Montagu Trial.
More than ten years before the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in 1967, Peter Wildeblood, and his friends Lord Montagu (Mark Edel-Hunt) and Michael Pitt-Rivers, were found guilty of homosexual offences and jailed.
With his career in tatters and his private life painfully exposed, Wildeblood began his sentence a broken man, but he emerged from Wormwood Scrubs a year later determined to do all he could to change the way these draconian laws against homosexuality impacted on the lives of men like him.
Daniel says: 「I'm incredibly proud to be part of a drama that tells such an important real-life story. Peter Wildeblood is a fascinating, complex, yet flawed character from a time when being a gay man in Britain was incredibly difficult - I can't wait to bring his tale to life for the BBC Two audience.」
Patrick Holland, Channel Editor, BBC Two, said: 「50 years ago, it was a crime to be a gay man in the UK. Against The Law is a stunning piece that melds drama and documentary testimony to tell the story of one man, and his wider generation, as they struggled to make society accept their sexuality as non-criminal. It is brilliant to have a film that brings the authorship of Brian Fillis, the vision of director Fergus O'Brien, and the outstanding talent of Daniel Mays and cast to this important subject」
The drama also features Mark Gatiss (Taboo, Sherlock) as Wildeblood's prison psychiatrist, Doctor Landers and Charlie Creed-Miles (Ripper Street, Peaky Blinders) as Superintendent Jones.
Woven through this powerful drama is real-life testimony from a chorus of men who lived through those dark days, when homosexuals were routinely imprisoned or forced to undergo chemical aversion therapy in an attempt to cure them of their "condition". There is also testimony from a retired police officer whose job it was to enforce these laws, and a former psychiatric nurse who administered the so-called cures. All of these accounts serve to amplify the themes of the drama and help to immerse us in the reality of a dark chapter in our recent past, a past still within the reach of living memory.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. Fassbinder – Lieben ohne zu fordern is based on his personal memories as well as a series of conversations and interviews he held with Fassbinder and his mother Lilo in the 1970s. The film also contains current interviews with Irm Hermann and Harry Baer, both of whom were close to Fassbinder. Beginning with Fassbinder’s extraordinary childhood in traumatised post-war Germany, the film, which is divided into seven chapters, provides an illuminating, intimate and moving tribute that bears witness to the enduring relevance of both the man and his work. Today in particular his oeuvre continues to provoke us to engage with controversy and tension – be it aesthetical, creative or critical. berlianle 2015
Leyre is a forty-something woman who lives in Bilbao, Basque Country (north to Spain) that tries to open a cupcakes shop. Divorced of Cosme, a corrupt CEO who is married in second terms with Vanesa, her attempt to build a life for herself and her teen son Asier turns upside-down after to realize that the absent-minded Asier killed his father during a Cosme's visit when he started to despise openly his son. Trying to save Asier to going the jail, Leyre hides the corpse in Cosme's car and suggested by Asier, goes to a bar implying a taxi driver in a fake scene of harassment to pay attention and having an alibi. But Vanesa and her corrupt lawyer Susana start the searching of Cosme and specially of his cell phone, which it contains enough evidences to reveal an entire web of nefarious business implying other important Bilbao's CEOs. Things complicate after Julen, Asier's best friend who is falling in love with Leyre and he tries to seduce her at any cost, at the same time that Andoni and ...
