EU hits the silver screen

Date: 05/09/1996

Lights! Camera! Action! - or whatever it is cigar-chewing movie directors say these days.

Yes, a fictional version of the everyday lives of ordinary Commissioner folk is being made into a film which is expected to be released next spring. Metropolis, a Berlin-based film company, is bringing Stanley Johnson's book The Commissioner to the screen in a three-country co-production involving the UK, Belgium and Germany.

Johnson, a former Commission official and Euro MP, is now head of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. He used his knowledge and experience of green issues in his plot, which snares the Commission and big business in an environmental scandal which is resolved, naturally enough, with the help of a diligent investigative journalist.

Some of the filming will be done in Brussels, although producer Christina Kallas has been unable to use the Berlaymont because of the renovation work.

She chose The Commissioner, she says, because it is an exciting story and a natural European film.

“Americans are always making films about their president, government and administration, so why shouldn't Europeans?”

The world awaits the cast list, anxious to see who will play James Morton, the British Industry Commissioner who rises from anonymity to hero status, and who will portray Murray Lomax, the fearless Scottish hack whose relentless digging gets to the bottom of the mystery.