British intelligence gets a dramatic turn

The role of British intelligence in extraordinary rendition and torture cases is to come under the spotlight in a new drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz.

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The spooky role of British intelligence in extraordinary rendition and torture cases is to come under the spotlight in a new drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz.

Written and directed by the Oscar-nominated playwright David Hare, Page 8 casts Fiennes as a British prime minister, Alec Beasley, who professes to be a staunch guardian of "liberal values and the price of defending them", but behind the scenes is anything but.

Bill Nighy will star as an MI5 agent who becomes aware of a classified file whose heinous eighth page gives the film its name.

Fiennes and Weisz previously collaborated on The Constant Gardener, while Fiennes played a key role in Hare's The Reader, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2008.

Hare told the Daily Mail the film would focus on the shadowy machinations of British intelligence, saying the film was a "realistic account of what I believe to have been going on in MI5-6 in the last few years.

"The last decade has been as testing as any in the history of the British intelligence community," he said. "The compromises and dilemmas they've faced make a fascinating story."

The film, which also stars Michael Gambon, is being made with the Harry Potter producers David Heyman and David Barron.

It is Hare's first original screenplay in 20 years. Filming began on Sunday, with the espionage thriller scheduled to be screened by the BBC later this year.

In January 2009, Hare accused the BBC of having "lost its nerve", saying it should devote more resources to drama.