Tessa Quayle, a brilliant and beautiful young social activist, has been found brutally murdered by Lake Turkana in Nairobi. The rumours are that she was faithless, careless, but her husband Justin, a reserved, garden-loving British diplomat, refuses to believe them. As he sets out to discover what really happened to Tessa, he unearths a conspiracy more disturbing, and more deadly, than he could ever have imagined.
Director Fernando Merielles expands the novel's ambivalent angle of view, so that we see London from Kibera as much as Kibera from London.
Nominated for ten BAFTA awards, winning Best Editing (Claire Simpson). Nominated for four Oscars, winning Best Supporting Actress (Rachel Weisz). Nominated for three Golden Globes, winning Best Supporting Actress (Rachel Weisz). Winner of Original Film Score award at Cannes Film Festival. Many other nominations and awards.
'The film's "passion, betrayal, gorgeous cinematography, social commentary, stellar performances and clever wit puts it in a special category near perfection."'
'The performances from Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are excellent, perhaps the very best of their careers, and there is first rate support, particularly from Bill Nighy as the Mephistophelean mandarin from the Foreign Office.'
'This is a supremely well-executed piece of popular entertainment that is likely to linger in your mind and may even trouble your conscience.'
'Meirelles shoots the chaos of Kenya in much the same way as he did the mean streets of Rio in his gangland debut - City of God - deploying the jittery camerawork, saturated colours and snake-quick cutting that acts like an amphetamine bolt (editor Claire Simpson does a superb job).'
