Official Secrets screening

At a packed Borough Hall, this was a very special event for the opening film of our 2023 - 2024 season!

GFS's Michael O'Sullivan welcomed director Gavin Hood (on the left) and journalist Martin Bright (in the middle - who broke the story the film was based on) to introduce the film and hold a Q&A after the screening of "Official Secrets".

Both Gavin and Martin were very engaging and passionate about the true story of Katharine Gun who leaked information about illegal NSA activity designed to push the UN into sanctioning the 2003 Iraqi invasion.

It was fascinating to hear how Gavin became involved in directing the film and co-writing the screenplay, the interviews he held with the real-life characters (portrayed in the film by Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans, Conleth Hill, Tamsin Greig and more), and film tidbits which the society members enjoyed!

Martin gave us an insight into how his part in breaking the story with his fellow Observer journalists became an integral part of the film, how this story influenced him - as well as some tidbits about Tony Blair!

It was over all too soon - and will go down in GFS history!

If you want to find out what happened to Katharine Gun, read the follow up article by Martin: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/03/katharine-gun-iraq-war-whistleblower

And a further follow up from 2019: https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/22/katharine-gun-whistleblower-iraq-official-secrets-film-keira-knightley