Sam Mendes honours cinema with his drama, “Empire of Light”

• Sam Mendes’ new film is a love story set in an English seaside town in the 1980s.
• Oscar-winning director celebrates cinema and the families that choose us.
• “Empire of Light” stars Olivia Colman, Colin Firth and Toby Jones.

Sam Mendes, an Oscar-winning director, honours cinema and the families we choose and that choose us in his latest movie, “Empire of Light,” a drama with a stellar cast that he wrote, produced, and directed.

“Empire of Light,” a love story set in an English coastal village in the early 1980s, stars Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, and Toby Jones as employees of the neighbourhood “Empire” theatre.

The new decade has begun uncertainly for the employees due to the recession, Hilary (Colman’s character) recovering from a mental health incident, and racial tensions growing outside the doors of the Empire.

The cinema comes to life with the appearance of Stephen, a positive, youthful Black ticket collector played by Micheal Ward. Hilary, a lonely middle-aged woman, and Stephen instantly click, and their developing connection helps both of them find comfort and inspiration.

Mendes, who co-authored the Oscar-nominated 2019 film “1917” and won the best director Oscar for 1999’s “American Beauty,” makes his solo screenplay debut with “Empire of Light,” which he penned during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to him, a lot of it was about his mother and growing up.

“It was very personal, it really was stimulated by memories from my childhood of growing up around someone who was mentally falling apart and yet somehow heroically was also bringing me up at the same time. So it is a love letter to her and to the courage of people struggling with mental illness,” he told known news channel on Wednesday at the movie’s London Film Festival premiere.

“And at the same time it’s also set in and around the cinema that’s seen better days, written during a time when we were worried that all those things were going and we’d never see them again,” he said.

Colman was given the part of Hilary by Mendes, who also sought Ward’s opinion on the character.

“Empire of Light” debuts in American theatres on December 9 and around the world in early 2023.

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