Nuclear Secrets: The Spy From Moscow

BBC2 - 2008 - Director/Writer

Oleg Penkovsky has long been regarded as the greatest spy of the Cold war. When I was at the BBC we negotiated unique access to never seen before KGB files & footage. It revealed for the first time the extent to which Penkovsky aided Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. But Penkovsky was under surveillance from the KGB, and to match their footage I looked for locations to recreate the settings in real life.

We managed to shoot a lot of the drama in the actual KGB interrogation cells in Lithuania. I shoot all my films hand-held, on prime lenses, wide open for minimum depth of field, which really gives the film a ‘cinematic espionage feel.’ I cast Russian actors in key roles and used Mikhail Gorbachev’s house to capture Russian grandeur.