Kate Winslet will present the European premiere of her film Lee at Munich International Film Festival,, where she will be honored with Cinemerit Award for her achievements in the art of film.
The film will be released in cinemas across Germany on September 26, 2024.
“Lee” is the spectacular true story of a woman ahead of her time; an American pioneer. Bold, decisive and honest, who makes decisions on her terms. A former model and subject of the avant-garde photographer Man Ray, Lee, now tired of being viewed through a lens and by men, is focused exclusively on her own work as a photographer. The threat of war looms and almost overnight everything about daily life changes completely. In the middle of the blitz, Lee Miller follows the love of her life, the art dealer Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), to his home town of London, where she seeks out work as a photographer for British Vogue. Frustrated by the restrictions placed on women and in particular female photographers at the time, and tired of hearing that women are expected to “do their duty” while the “men get to decide what that is!”, Miller urges her female boss at British Vogue, Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) to request permission from the Ministry of Information for Lee to go to the front line. Miller is turned down, simply because of her gender. Eventually, after exhausting the British system, Lee gains a US war accreditation and heads off to Europe. Alone.
After battling her way through the siege of Saint Malo, Lee joins forces with fellow photographer David E. Scherman (Andy Samberg). Lee and Scherman become a fierce team, but Lee is their leader and they are always first through the door for any scoop. Lee and Scherman document the liberation of Paris. They sneak into Hitler’s abandoned Munich home — where Scherman captures the most defining image of Lee herself, bathing in the Führer’s bathtub. They are among the first photographers to enter the camps at Buchenwald and Dachau, where Lee crafts a series of horrifying, urgent images, often featuring the plight of women and girls, that will sear themselves into history, but sadly also into Lee’s fragmenting mental state in the years beyond the war.
“We’re delighted that Kate Winslet will be celebrating the film’s European premiere with us in Munich. ‘Lee’ is a wonderfully intense character portrait. It’s important to us that the Munich International Film Festival, with its many films and voices, sends a clear signal for democracy, diversity, and cohesion,” say festival director Christoph Gröner and artistic co-director Julia Weigl.
Kate Winslet began developing the project in 2016 with Lee Miller’s son, Antony Penrose. Struck by the defining decade of Lee’s life which she spent as a war correspondent on the front line in Europe during World War II, Kate, alongside Antony, immersed herself across several years in Lee’s personal archival material in order to discover the events and experiences that drove Lee to use her voice as a witness to war.
Directed by former cinematographer Ellen Kuras (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) and written by Liz Hannah (“The Post”) and Marion Hume & John Collee. Based on the biography “Lives of Lee Miller” written by Lee’s son, Antony Penrose. The film features performances by Marion Cotillard (“La Vie En Rose”), Andrea Riseborough (“Amsterdam”), Andy Samberg (“Brooklyn 99”), Josh O’Connor (“The Crown”), and Alex Skarsgård (“Succession”)
The 41st Munich International Film Festival will be held from June 28 to July 7, 2024.