Moment Of Truth

In 2003, GCHQ translator Katharine Gun turned whistleblower by leaking documents that shed a new, disturbing light on the invasion of Iraq. Her story is captured in Gavin Hood’s drama Official Secrets, starring Keira Knightley, Matt Smith and Ralph Fiennes. Total Film visits the set to discover a film determined to tell the truth.

- James Mottram

Today, the beautiful first-floor interior of Bradford City Hall is awash with the crew, cables, cameras, and a rather illustrious cast. The film is Official Secrets, Gavin Hood’s stirring account of British whistleblower Katharine Gun. The set is the antechambers of the Old Bailey, the country’s most venerable court of law. And Gun – played by Keira Knightley – is about to learn her fate after spending eight months on bail.

A GCHQ translator, Gun stumbled across a memo in early 2003 from America’s National Security Agency urging its British ally to coerce members of the UN Security Council to vote for the impending war in Iraq. “It was a line that I didn’t think we should cross,” explains Gun, when Total Film speaks with her via Skype. Instinctively, at the time, she smuggled the memo. “It was a leak that was trying to save lives,” suggests Knightley.

While Gun might be less famous than whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, her actions didn’t go unnoticed. Daniel Ellsberg, the ex-US military analyst responsible for exposing the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon administration, called Gun’s work “the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen”. It was this bravery that first intrigued Hood, a former lawyer whose politically charged credits include Eye In The Sky and Rendition.