The Storms of Jeremy Thomas (2023)
Director: Mark Cousins Run Time: 94 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Debra Winger, Jeremy Thomas, Mark Cousins, Tilda Swinton
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
About the film:
Official Selection, Cannes Classics 2021
For decades, legendary film producer Jeremy Thomas has driven from England to the Cannes Film Festival. This time, he’s joined by acclaimed filmmaker Mark Cousins.
“Ninety minutes at the sweet trolley of pure cinephilia… this is hardcore, movie-mad immersion”
—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
On their intimate, visual five-day road movie through rural France, they remember some of the most acclaimed and controversial films ever made: Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987), which won nine Academy Awards for Thomas when he was still in his 30s, including Best Picture; David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) and its Cannes scandal; the masterpiece of sexual obsession, Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing (1980). Thomas introduces us to his remarkable world of movie stars–Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, David Bowie–and daring international cinema, influenced by punk and counter-culture. The journey is intercut with acclaimed actors Tilda Swinton and Debra Winger, who give exclusive insights into the man and his work.
Illustrated with a dazzling range of film clips and rich insights about creativity and survival, The Storms of Jeremy Thomas is a road movie portrait of France, a film school, and–in the era of streaming and corporatization–a passionate call to arms for movies that get to the heart of life.
About the filmmaker:
Mark Cousins is a multi award-winning Irish-Scottish filmmaker, critic and festival programmer. He has programmed the Edinburgh Film Festival (1996-97), hosted BBC2’s Moviedrome (1997-2000) and Scene by Scene (1999-2000), and is the author of “The Story of Film” and (with Kevin Macdonald) “Imagining Reality: the Faber Book of Documentary”. His acclaimed films include The First Movie (2009), The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), A Story of Children and Film (2013) and The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018). Along with The Story of Film: A New Generation (2021), his documentary The Storms of Jeremy Thomas (2021) was selected to screen at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
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