National Theatre Live: Dear England (2024)

National Theatre: Rockets and Blue Lights

On the set of a new film about Victorian artist JMW Turner, young actress Lou is haunted by an unresolved history. Meanwhile, in 1840 Londoners Lucy and Thomas try to come to terms with the meaning of freedom. Moving between London past and present, we embark on a powerfully personal voyage through time.

Chicago

Murderesses Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago.

Rope

Two friends attempt to prove they committed the perfect murder by hosting a dinner for the family of a classmate they strangled to death.

Brubaker

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

Mississippi Burning

Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.

Crash

In post-Sept. 11 Los Angeles, tensions erupt when the lives of a Brentwood housewife, her district attorney husband, a Persian shopkeeper, two cops, a pair of carjackers and a Korean couple converge during a 36-hour period.

A Time to Kill

A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.

Freedom Writers

A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.

Born on the Fourth of July

Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, Ron Kovic becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for.

Pleasantville

Geeky teenager David and his popular twin sister, Jennifer, get sucked into the black-and-white world of a 1950s TV sitcom called "Pleasantville," and find a world where everything is peachy keen all the time. But when Jennifer's modern attitude disrupts Pleasantville's peaceful but boring routine, she literally brings color into its life.

The Bounty

The familiar story of Lieutenant Bligh, whose cruelty leads to a mutiny on his ship. This version follows both the efforts of Fletcher Christian to get his men beyond the reach of British retribution, and the epic voyage of Lieutenant Bligh to get his loyalists safely to East Timor in a tiny lifeboat.

The Country Girl

An ex-theater actor is given one more chance to star in a musical yet his alcoholism may prevent it from happening.

Misbehaviour

A group of women involved in the Women's Liberation Movement hatched a plan to invade the stage and disrupt the live broadcast at the 1970 Miss World competition in London, resulting in overnight fame for the newly-formed organization. When the show resumed, the results caused an uproar and turned the Western ideal of beauty on its head.

Lost Girls

When Mari Gilbert's daughter disappears, police inaction drives her own investigation into the gated Long Island community where Shannan was last seen. Her search brings attention to over a dozen murdered prostitutes.

Cardelinas

August 1936. After being separated from her family by the Falangists, Concha Monrás spends her last days in a prison cell. With her young cellmate Adela, she reconstructs her relationship with Ramón Acín and remembers his life as an artist, a pedagogue and a man.

Closer

A love story about chance meetings, instant attractions, and casual betrayals. Four strangers - with one thing in common: each other.

The Perfect Storm

In October 1991, a confluence of weather conditions combined to form a killer storm in the North Atlantic. Caught in the storm was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail.

The System

Vastly different lives and perspectives become intertwined after a police officer suffering from reoccurring PTSD mistakenly shoots a deaf African-American kid, exposing layers of racial tension and corruption within the political, judicial and prison system.

Dear Evan Hansen

Evan Hansen, a high schooler with social anxiety, unintentionally gets caught up in a lie after the family of a classmate who committed suicide mistakes one of Hansen’s letters for their son’s suicide note.

Adoration

Based on the real life story of Sagawa, a Japanese student who killed, dismembered and ate a young Dutch girl in Paris.

Golda

Set during the tense 19 days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is faced with the potential of Israel’s complete destruction. She must navigate overwhelming odds, a skeptical cabinet and a complex relationship with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with millions of lives in the balance. Her tough leadership and compassion would ultimately decide the fate of her nation and leave her with a controversial legacy around the world.

Barking Island

Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1910. There are too many stray dogs on the streets, so the government decides to deport thousands of them on a desert island, off the coast of the city.

Kaum De Heere

Militant bodyguards carry out the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister in 1984.

The Sheriff

A rape case opens racial divisions in a small town. A black sheriff and his white deputy investigate allegations that a wealthy white businessman raped a black college student.

Mädchen in Uniform

A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.

Flyboys

The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.

Glory

Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.

Infamous

While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.

North Country

A fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States -- Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit.

Bound by Honor

Based on the true life experiences of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, the film focuses on half-brothers Paco and Cruz, and their bi-racial cousin Miklo. It opens in 1972, as the three are members of an East L.A. gang known as the "Vatos Locos", and the story focuses on how a violent crime and the influence of narcotics alter their lives. Miklo is incarcerated and sent to San Quentin, where he makes a "home" for himself. Cruz becomes an exceptional artist, but a heroin addiction overcomes him with tragic results. Paco becomes a cop and an enemy to his "carnal", Miklo.

Gridiron Gang

Under the leadership of their counselor, teenagers at a juvenile detention center gain self-esteem by playing football together.

Lords of Dogtown

The radical true story behind three teenage surfers from Venice Beach, California, who took skateboarding to the extreme and changed the world of sports forever. Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams are the Z-Boys, a bunch of nobodies until they create a new style of skateboarding that becomes a worldwide phenomenon. But when their hobby becomes a business, the success shreds their friendship.

Marvin's Room

A leukemia patient attempts to end a 20-year feud with her sister to get her bone marrow.

The Phantom of the Opera

Deformed since birth, a bitter man known only as The Phantom lives in the sewers underneath the Paris Opera House. He falls in love with the obscure chorus singer Christine, and privately tutors her while terrorizing the rest of the crew.

Coco Before Chanel

Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.

The Merchant of Venice

Venice, 1596. Bassanio begs his friend Antonio, a prosperous merchant, to lend him a large sum of money so that he can woo Portia, a very wealthy heiress; but Antonio has invested his fortune abroad, so they turn to Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and ask him for a loan.

Jasper Jones

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

Insecure: All the Best for the Future

The lawyer Franziska Schlüter works for the Aescuria insurance and is responsible for processing applications for disbursement of occupational disability policies. The company policy provides as a guideline to prevent the approval as far as possible. When the widow of a victim, who committed suicide after being rejected, storms the office to loudly accuse these machinations, Franziska begins to doubt the correctness of her work and to rethink. She quits and works as a freelance lawyer to help injured parties legally to get their rights. First she deals with the case of a family in the neighborhood. The father has been in a wheelchair since an accident. However, the Strelaus have not yet seen any money from the insurance company. Initially not taken seriously by colleagues, the shy woman takes on the fight against the health insurance system and has to fight against resistance and above all with her own self-doubt.

Lessons in Red

When a junior high student in 1963 suspects his teacher of being a communist, he investigates the truth to gain approval from his father.

The Mercy

In 1968, Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor, endangers the fate of his family and business, and his own life, blinded by his ambition to compete in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, attempting to become the first person in history to single-handedly circumnavigate the world without making any stopover.

Riding in Cars with Boys

In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.

Death and the Maiden

A political activist is convinced that her guest is a man who once tortured her for the government.

Hamlet

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying the murderer... his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing.

Veronica Guerin

In this true story, Veronica Guerin is an investigative reporter for an Irish newspaper. As the drug trade begins to bleed into the mainstream, Guerin decides to take on and expose those responsible. Beginning at the bottom with addicts, Guerin then gets in touch with John Traynor, a paranoid informant. Not without some prodding, Traynor leads her to John Gilligan, the ruthless head of the operation, who does not take kindly to Guerin's nosing.

Boys Will Be Boys, Boys Will Be Men

In May of 1941, a group of young army volunteers is recruited in Chumpon south of Bangkok. Many high-school students apply to join the group. When the Japanese army lands at Chumpon in December, they bravely fight against the army. The film is based on the true story of how young army volunteers fought to defend their country from the Japanese Army. A misunderstanding between the two nations caused the unnecessary war to break out.

The Sweet Hereafter

A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.

The Honeymoon Killers

Martha Beck, an obese nurse who is desperately lonely, joins a "correspondence club" and finds a romantic pen pal in Ray Fernandez. Martha falls hard for Ray, and is intent on sticking with him even when she discovers he's a con man who seduces lonely single women, kills them and then takes their money. She poses as Ray's sister and joins Ray on a wild killing spree, fueled by her lingering concern that Ray will leave her for one of his marks.

Hamlet

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, finds out that his uncle Claudius killed his father to obtain the throne, and plans revenge.

Two for the Money

A former college athlete joins forces with a sports consultant to handicap football games for high-rolling gamblers.

Uncommon Valor

A group of Vietnam War veterans re-unite to rescue one of their own left behind and taken prisoner by the Vietnamese.

The Year of the Cannibals

On the streets of a damp metropolis lie the corpses of hundreds and hundreds of boys and girls. No one can give them a resting place because of a law enacted by a repressive State. But the young Antigone, with the help of a foreigner, Tiresias, violates this rule in the name of pietas, undermining the established order.

Cabaret

Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.

F1

Racing legend Sonny Hayes is coaxed out of retirement to lead a struggling Formula 1 team—and mentor a young hotshot driver—while chasing one more chance at glory.

Padu

The story of the reliability of the Malaysian Women's Basketball team which has collected 13 gold medals from 20 SEA Games tournaments since 1977.

Chaplin

An aged Charlie Chaplin narrates his life to his autobiography's editor, including his rise to wealth and comedic fame from poverty, his turbulent personal life and his run-ins with the FBI.

Shadowlands

C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham.

Masacre en el río Tula

Based on a real event, twelve dead bodies are found in the Tula River, we see the events that lead up to the massacre in a tale of crime, vice, corruption and sleaze.

True West

A screenwriter gets conned out of selling a script to a Hollywood producer by his brother, who pitches his own idea for a movie. This video recording of the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production was later broadcast by PBS.

The Last Descent

In 2009 John Jones entered Nutty Putty Cave with his brother Josh. What happened next has been a topic of much discussion and controversy ever since. Over 127 rescuers responded to the call for aid, and each one has their own take on the events. A story about love, life, and human connection. Ultimately it is the story about how clearly you can see what matters most when you are at the edge of life and death. Made with cooperation from members of John's immediate family.