One Life director on "incredibly powerful" experience of filming in real locations
James Hawes spoke exclusively to RadioTimes.com about shooting the emotional new film starring Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn.
One Life director James Hawes has opened up about the emotion of filming scenes where the events of the film took place.
The period drama tells the true story of Nicholas Winton and how he helped rescue hundreds of Jewish children in Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War, and a lot of its filming actually took place in Prague - where many scenes are set.
Hawes discussed the impact of filming in the city exclusively with RadioTimes.com, explaining: "It was incredibly powerful to be filming in Prague, and constantly have people coming up to us and talking about how their family was linked to it, how they either helped some of the children or the refugees, Jewish and otherwise, how their grandparents had sent them off on the train, because obviously, some of the children came back to Prague afterwards.
"So you felt it coming through the stones, you felt a pride in the people of the city that we were telling this story, and it was partly their story."
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Hawes also explained how he first came across the story, which was immortalised through an episode of That’s Life! in 1988, which saw Winton reunited with many of the now-adult children he had saved from the Nazis.
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The director, who has previously helmed episodes of Slow Horses, Doctor Who and Black Mirror, said: "I heard of Nicholas Winton's story the way most people did, which is that clip on YouTube, guaranteed to make you cry any time of the day or night or week or year.
"And I have a confession here, which is [that] my second ever job in the industry was [as] a trainee researcher on that show.
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"I'm not going to tell you [that] it might or might not have been quite close to the time that Nicholas Winton was on.
"So I worked with Esther [Rantzen] and I had a particular interest in that show and its impact on the British public, frankly, and the BBC, because I think this is a piece of television history, as well as a piece of European history."
One Life features both Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn as Winton, while Helena Bonham Carter portrays his mother, Babi, and the cast is rounded out by Jonathan Pryce, Romola Garai, Lena Olin and Samantha Spiro as Esther Rantzen.
The film is based on the book If It’s Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton, which was written by Barbara Winton, his daughter.
One Life is released in UK cinemas on New Year's Day, while a digital exhibition curated in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, titled ONE LIFE: Sir Nicholas Winton and Portraits of Kindertransport Refugees, is available at npg.org.uk.
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