Peter Watkins is one of the great, unsung master filmmakers. Through an uncompromising, singular body of work, he has forged a reputation as one of British cinema’s most vital & provocative voices. 50 years on from its initial cinema release, his landmark 1965 film The War Game remains one of the most challenging & unsettling works ever produced for British TV.
For this fictional story of a nuclear attack on Kent, Watkins met the subject with a stark, documentary realism. So real in fact, that it was deemed unsuitable for broadcast and would be banned for 20 years, despite being nominated and winning the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1967.
Due to its ground-breaking collision of fiction & documentary and truly unforgettable imagery, it’s not surprising that The War Game is now recognised as one of the most important and influential pieces of Television of the period.