Public Servant Lifestyle

The futures’ looking bleak as Soylent Green meets Newsnight in a big screen adaptation of a near future P.D James novel.

Children of Men

No children...No future...No hope...Children of Men envisages a frightening dystopian world on the edge (or perhaps beyond the edge) of collapse. The year is 2027 and Britain is a besieged nation, blockaded and isolated from the outside world while torn apart from within by social strife, mass depression, acts of senseless terrorism and authoritarian repression. This is a modern day dark ages Britain one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. As the film opens the worlds’ youngest citizen – clearly watched from birth in a style instantly telegraphed to the viewer as a reality TV style celebrity - has just died at 18. With this senseless death humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction.

Future London

Children of Men follows disillusioned minor bureaucrat ‘Theo’ Theodore Faron – played by Clive Owen (Sin City) as he becomes an unlikely champion of – who might just have the planet’s survival riding on his shoulders. When the planet’s last remaining hope is threatened he must rise above his own personal tragedies to become a reluctant activist and do the right thing to protect her from certain peril.

Close in feel to Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer’s 1973 adaptation of Harry Harrison’s overcrowding superior novel Make Room, Make Room) and reminiscent of the bleak return to semi feudalism of television such Knights of God, Threads or the beginnings of Terry Nations pandemic drama Survivors this is bleak stuff handled with a sense of stark realism and more than a nod to the chaos going on in the real world all around us.

Y Tu Mamá También

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mamá También), Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore (Laws of Attraction, Marie and Bruce, The Hours, Far from Heaven, Freedomland) as the leader of an underground opposition group - Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity, Kinky Boots), Claire-Hope Ashitey, Pam Ferris, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan, Charlie Hunnam and Michael Caine (The Ipcress File, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Zulu, Educating Rita, countless others...) as the gentle eco-activist Jasper.

The world of the film gradually begins to unravel as the central charcaters find themselves in a more and more desperate situation - heading towards a detention centre as an uprising threatens to boil over into all-out revolution. Critic Stella Papamichael, writing on the film for the BBC said: “The confusion of political messages and gaps in logic threaten to put the brakes on everything. But (director) Cuarón has enough flair for action to keep the chase involving and shows as much sensitivity with Theo's spiritual re-awakening.”

The film has been produced by Marc Abraham & Eric Newman (Spy Game, Dawn of the Dead), Hilary Shor & Tony Smith (Eye of the Beholder, Beautopia) and Iain Smith (Alexander, Cold Mountain) and adapted for the screen by Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton (Live from Baghdad) and David Arata (Brokedown Palace).

Children of Men is out now, featuring an additional documentary - Men Under Attack.

For more information visit the film’s official website here.

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More information available in DVD / Home Video