"Enjoy any Charlie Chaplin you have the good luck to encounter, but don’t try to link them up to anything you can grasp.
There are too many of them."
From the award-winning creative team behind NOTES ON BLINDNESS comes a contemporary take on cinema’s most iconic figure. In an innovative blend of newly-unearthed audio recordings, dramatic reconstructions and personal archive, the film traces his meteoric rise from the slums of Victorian London to the heights of Hollywood, before his scandalous fall from grace.
Praised by film critic Mark Kermode as "a gripping study of a complex superstar", the film refracts Chaplin’s story through a kaleidoscope of previously unheard voices and perspectives, shedding new light on the many sides of a groundbreaking, controversial and visionary artist.
THE REAL CHARLIE CHAPLIN premiered at the Telluride International Film Festival before playing at festivals worldwide. It was released theatrically in cinemas in spring 2022 and nominated for three Critics' Choice Documentary Awards and two Emmy Awards.
"This film piercingly asks the right questions about Chaplin’s elusive reality"
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The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw
"This inventive documentary… provides a gripping, clear-eyed overview of Chaplin’s life and work"
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The Observer - Film of the Week, Mark Kermode
"Fascinating… exhaustively researched and intellectually stimulating"
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The Times, Kevin Maher
"Honest and superbly made"
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Film Review, Mansel Stimpson
Directed by PETER MIDDLETON and JAMES SPINNEY
Produced by Jon Battesek, Mike Brett, Jo-Jo Ellison, Steve Jamison, Ben Limberg
Co-produced by Peter Middleton and James Spinney
Associate produced by Matt Houghton
An ARCHER’S MARK, PASSION PICTURES and SMALLER BIGGIE production, in association with FEE FIE FOE and VENTURELAND. The film was funded by the BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE, FILM4 and SHOWTIME. Sales and distribution by ALTITUDE FILM.
2021 | 114 mins