Dunkirk The Movie | Grand Cygnet Cinema, Como WA | July 2017

Nova invited clients to the historically significant, art-deco Cygnet Cinema in Como to see the Christopher Nolan film DUNKIRK, days after its worldwide premiere. Starring the wonderful Sir Kenneth Branagh the film portrays the days in 1940 when 400,000 British and French troops found themselves on a beach at the northernmost tip of France, surrounded by German forces. Only with the help of hundreds of vessels from across the English Channel — fishing boats and leisure craft, captained by their civilian owners — did the Allied army manage to avoid being wiped out.

Thus was the British public galvanised into the war effort, giving rise to the phrase ‘Dunkirk spirit’, meaning everyone helping out in a time of crisis. The film showed what the evacuation was like through the telling of three stories simultaneously – land, sea and air: a young private trying every way he can to get onto the one Red Cross ship, a mild-mannered Englishman and his son in their motor boat to help in the rescue and an RAF Spitfire pilot sent to take on German planes respectively. The movie was preceded by a lunch including cucumber sandwiches, scones and tea – a themed touch by NOVA!