UK Armed Forces Shoot Porn in WWII Satire

The first trailer for “Think of England,” the upcoming satirical WWII drama from BAFTA-nominated author/director Richard Hawkins (“Theory of Flight, “Everything”), has been unveiled.

Inspired by an everlasting wartime city delusion that Winston Churchill’s U.Ok. authorities commissioned pornographic movies to spice up troop morale during World War II, the movie — which first premiered in Tallinn — is now set to get its U.Ok. premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on March 6.

Set in the summer time of 1943 on the Orkney Islands, the place the Normandy landings are fast approaching and troops on the entrance line are more and more determined, the movie follows an eclectic group of characters, each chosen for their very own distinctive skillset, tasked with a top-secret mission: to make pornographic movies meant to lift morale ahead of invasion. As each assignee struggles under the weight of conscience, coercion, and worry, the darkly satirical story examines who attracts society’s ethical strains, who enforces them, and what occurs when they’re crossed under excessive stress.

The movie, which was shot under the ideas of Ted Hope’s NonDe motion, stars Ronni Ancona (“Big Impression,” “EastEnders”) as wardrobe and make-up artist Agnes Duprée, with main girl Natalie Quarry (“Call the Midwife”) as Holly Spurring, and main man Jack Bandeira (“The Gold,” “Andor”) as Corporal Evans, alongside John McCrea (Olivier award-winner “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”) as Captain Anthony Clune. The solid also contains Ben Bela Böhm (“Better Call Saul”), Oscar Hoppe (“All the Light We Cannot See”) and Ollie Maddigan (“The Olive Boy”).

Produced by father-daughter duo Nick and Poppy O’Hagan for Giant Films, “Think of England” is also a described as a “controversial film about cinema itself,” about how shifting photographs have “historically tested, challenged, and redrawn the boundaries of what audiences are willing to see.” Set firmly within its time, the movie “shines a light on the institutional misogyny and homophobia of the era while allowing its unlikely characters to gesture toward a more tolerant future, reminding us to continually question the sensibilities and censorship of any age, including our own.”

See the “Think of England” trailer below