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Steve McQueen on How WWII Drama ‘Blitz’ Became ‘More Urgent’ in Face of Escalating Global Violence: ‘What the Hell Are We Doing?’
Steve McQueen on his LFF-opening WWII drama 'Blitz,' discovering Saoirse Ronan could sing and casting musicians Paul Weller and Benjamin Clementine.
Taking place over just a few days, the visceral drama follows a 9-year-old boy — played by newcomer Elliot Heffernan — sent off to safety in the countryside but determined to return home to find his mother ( Saoirse Ronan), who likewise is desperately searching for her missing son amid the chaos and carnage. But these thoughts only started forming into a film many years later, as McQueen was researching his miniseries “Small Axe” and came across a picture of a young Black boy in an oversized winter coat with a large suitcase, awaiting evacuation at a train station. The boy’s odyssey through London in “Blitz” was eventually pieced together with help from the Imperial War Museum, historian Joshua Levine and firsthand accounts of life during those deadly months of bombardment, incorporating several real-life events and people from that era into the story.
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