Director: Stephen Poliakoff
Writer: Stephen Poliakoff
Genre: Drama
Release Date: November 20, 2009 (UK)
Status: Coming Soon

Cast
Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, David Tennant, Juno Temple, Eddie Redmayne, Asier Newman, Christopher Lee, Hugh Bonneville, Jeremy Northam

Synopsis
England, 1939. Beautiful summer days. Country mansions. Elegant picnics. Banter. But this is also a year when storm clouds are gathering on the horizon: war is imminent. Director Stephen Poliakoff creates a highly unusual and exceptionally intelligent portrait of what was going on in England during those fateful days, glimpsed and digested through the lens of a prominent family at the centre of events that could have fateful consequences for the future of the nation. What the story explores is the antithesis of all the familiar clichés of a brave, united country standing up to Hitler.

In ingenious and wonderfully ambitious fashion, Poliakoff disguises as much as he reveals until we are well into the film. At the core of Glorious 39 is a family drama, played out against the idyllic backdrop of rural England, where luxurious cars run people to country picnics. Anne (Romola Garai), an attractive young blond actress, is seemingly safe within the bosom of her adoring family. She is doted on by an affectionate father, a supportive brother and her loving boyfriend. But as tensions rise and the political crisis deepens, her father, a minister in the government, takes the family back to London. A sense of unease soon creeps over the film. One of Anne’s best friends disappears, her boyfriend is called away to France and she subsequently finds herself in possession of some mysterious audio recordings. At the same time, the country begins to cope with the daily reality of being at war. No one knows what will happen, and Anne discovers that her cocooned life is about to change completely.

Poliakoff has concocted a wonderfully unsettling film that shows an England teetering on the edge of making fundamental decisions about its future. Supported by a superb cast of some of the finest English actors, he pries open his subject with a series of deft revelations, giving us a completely different sense of what was going on during the glorious year of 1939.

Other Titles
- 1939 [UK (working title)]

Trivia
- The film reunites Bill Nighy with two of his on screen daughters from different movies, Romola Garai from I Capture the Castle (2003) and Juno Temple from Notes on a Scandal (2006). Bill Nighy portrays their father in this movie as well.