{"id":1687109,"date":"2022-10-12T17:54:22","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1687109"},"modified":"2022-10-12T17:54:38","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T21:54:38","slug":"sam-mendes-empire-of-light-a-love-letter-to-movies-and-his-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sam-mendes-empire-of-light-a-love-letter-to-movies-and-his-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Mendes\u2019 \u2018Empire of Light\u2019 a love letter to movies and his mother"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsam-mendes-empire-of-light-a-love-letter-to-movies-and-his-mother%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1687109&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Hanna Rantala<\/p>\n<p>LONDON (Reuters) \u2013     Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes celebrates cinema and the families we choose and that choose us with his new film \u201cEmpire of Light\u201d, a star-studded drama he wrote, directed and produced.<\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1663871513696-art-1\">\n<\/div>\n<p>A love story set in an English seaside town in the early 1980s, \u201cEmpire of Light\u201d stars Olivia Colman, Colin Firth and Toby Jones as workers in a local movie theatre, the \u2018Empire\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>With the country in recession, Colman\u2019s character Hilary recovering from an episode of mental illness, and racial tensions building outside the doors of the Empire, the new decade has got off to an uncertain start for the staff.<\/p>\n<p>The arrival of Stephen, an upbeat young Black ticket collector played by Micheal Ward, injects new life into the cinema. Stephen instantly bonds with Hilary, a lonely middle-aged woman, and their budding relationship helps both find solace and inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>Mendes, who won the best director Oscar for 1999\u2019s \u201cAmerican Beauty\u201d and co-wrote the Oscar-nominated 2019 film \u201c1917\u201d makes his solo screenplay debut with \u201cEmpire of Light,\u201d which he wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of it reflected on growing up and his mother, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt 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,\u201d the director, 57, told Reuters at the movie\u2019s London Film Festival premiere on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd at the same time it\u2019s also set in and around the cinema that\u2019s seen better days, written during a time when we were worried that all those things were going and we\u2019d never see them again,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>Mendes wrote the role of Hilary for Colman and asked Ward for input on his character. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s rare that you get to see an older woman with a younger man, especially an older white woman but younger Black man. So for me to tell that story was just super important and working with Olivia made that a lot more easier,\u201d said Ward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEmpire of Light\u201d is released in U.S. cinemas on Dec. 9 and globally in early 2023.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Hanna Rantala, Editing by Rosalba O\u2019Brien)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/entertainment\/sam-mendes-empire-of\/attachment\/bfi-london-film-festival-in-london-5\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.oann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEntertainmentNews\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10O-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10O-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/entertainment\/sam-mendes-empire-of\/attachment\/bfi-london-film-festival-in-london-6\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.oann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEntertainmentNews\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10N-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10N-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/entertainment\/sam-mendes-empire-of\/attachment\/bfi-london-film-festival-in-london-7\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.oann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEntertainmentNews\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10P-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10P-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/entertainment\/sam-mendes-empire-of\/attachment\/bfi-london-film-festival-in-london-8\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.oann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEntertainmentNews\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10R-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10R-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/entertainment\/sam-mendes-empire-of\/attachment\/bfi-london-film-festival-in-london-9\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.oann.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEntertainmentNews\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10Q-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI9B10Q-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Hanna Rantala LONDON (Reuters) \u2013 Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes celebrates cinema and the families we choose and that choose us with his new film \u201cEmpire of Light\u201d, a star-studded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}