Taglines: Unlock the secret. Win the war.
Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.
The film portrays the race against time by Alan Turing and his team of code-breakers at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II. The motley group of scholars, mathematicians, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers had a powerful ally in Prime Minister Winston Churchill who authorized the provision of any resource they required.
The film spans the key periods of Turing’s life: his unhappy teenage years at boarding school; the triumph of his secret wartime work on the revolutionary electro-mechanical bombe that was capable of breaking 3,000 Enigma-generated naval codes a day; and the tragedy of his post-war decline following his conviction for gross indecency, a now-outdated criminal offence stemming from his admission of maintaining a homosexual relationship.
The Imitation Game is a British-American historical thriller film about British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, a key figure in cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code that helped the Allies win World War II, only to later be criminally prosecuted for his homosexuality. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing and is directed by Morten Tyldum with a screenplay by Graham Moore, based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
The film’s screenplay topped the annual Black List for best unproduced Hollywood scripts in 2011. After a bidding process against five other studios, The Weinstein Company acquired the film for $7 million in February 2014, the highest ever amount paid for US distribution rights at the European Film Market.
The film had its world premiere at the 41st Telluride Film Festival in August, it also featured at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival in September where it won “People’s Choice Award for Best Film,” the highest award of the festival. It had its European premiere as the opening film of the 58th BFI London Film Festival on October 2014. The Imitation Game will have a general release in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2014, and will be released theatrically in the United States on 28 November 2014.
The Imitation Game (2014)
Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Mark Strong, Charles Dance, Allen Leech, Tuppence Middleton, Hayley Joanne Bacon, Hannah Flynn, Grace Calder
Screenplay by: Graham Moore
Production Design by: Maria Djurkovic
Cinematography by: Oscar Faura
Film Editing by: William Goldenberg
Costume Design by: Sammy Sheldon
Art Direction by: Nick Dent, Rebecca Milton, Marco Anton Restivo
Music by: Alexandre Desplat
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual references, mature thematic material and historical smoking.
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Release Date: November 28, 2014
Visits: 73