Childhood of a Leader

Childhood of a Leader

classified 12A S
Film

Please note: This was screened in Sept 2016

Director
Brady Corbet
Cast
Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham, Robert Pattinson, Stacy Martin, Tom Sweet
Details
116 mins, & Subtitled, 2015, UK/Hungary/France

Indie darling Brady Corbet makes his directorial debut with this operatic psychodrama about what exactly makes a dictator.

Set in the aftermath of the Great War in France, we meet angelic-looking seven-year-old Prescott (fiercely intense newcomer Tom Sweet), whose increasingly delinquent behaviour causes a shift of power within the fragile yet oppressive confines of a huge countryside house. The story follows his parents' (American diplomat father Liam Cunningham, who is increasingly absent as he tries to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, and melancholic German mother Berenice Bejo) futile attempts to discipline the little imp while the unsettling possibility of another fall for Europe and the rise of fascism looms heavily over everyone.

Also featuring an utterly chilling turn from Robert Pattinson, this immensely atmospheric and very unusual film invites you to examine the evil all around us. As one critic put it: "tyrants aren't born, they are moulded, and we as a society are the sculptors".


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