Michael Winterbottom Talks 1930’s Palestine-Set British Terrorism Tale, ‘The Promised Land’

Versatile director Michael Winterbottom is obviously fearless in his filmmaking but the helmer is showing no signs of backing down on the eve of his eyebrowing-raising Sundance entry “The Killer Inside Me” hitting theaters, now taking time to discuss his forthcoming tale of terrorism in British-ruled Palestine, “The Promised Land.”

“Right now, we’re wanting to do a film set in Palestine in the 1930s about British police chasing Jewish terrorist groups,” Winterbottom tells ComingSoon. “There’s a guy called Avraham Stern, who was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground from when Britain was controlling Palestine, so it’s set in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and it’s about police trying to capture Stern and Stern trying to kill the police. It’s based on a true story.”

A charismatic poet and successful academic, Stern founded and led a Zionist organization responsible for numerous terrorist activities in the ’30s and ’40s which aimed to evict British authorities, allow the unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. At one stage, Stern even reached out to the Nazis, offering to assist the “transfer” of Jewish people out of Europe and to help fight their common enemy, the British, in World War II, in return for help against the British in Palestine — he never heard back from Berlin despite support from some lower German officials.

It’s a fascinating story and should serve as great source material for Winterbottom — we particularly can’t wait to see how the director tackles Stern and the British rule of Palestine. While early reports had wrongly pegged Colin Firth for the role of Stern (which would be some damn inspired casting) Winterbottom confirmed it was an error when he detailed the project development. “We’ve been working on the story … for a couple years, so last year, we went out to look at locations and we’ve cast the English police parts, that’s Jim Sturgess, Matthew MacFadyen and Colin Firth, so they’re the three main English guys, but we haven’t cast the Jewish parts yet.”

“We did quite a lot of research, it’s based on two policemen called Wilkin (Sturgess) and Morton (MacFadyen), real policemen, so we just did our own research on that, and as I say, they’re chasing this guy called Stern who is one of the leaders of the underground.”

***Warning: the rest of this article contains more details of the true story behind “The Promised Land” which may be considered spoilers.***

“They ended up catching Stern and killing him, and then two years later, one of the policemen was assassinated, so weirdly, we have at the end of the film, we have an interview, which we’ve already done with one of the people who assassinated Wilkin, who is still alive, two of them in fact, so we have them talking about how they assassinated Wilkin already, so it’s a great story.”

The ending sounds somewhat reminiscent of that in Andrew Dominik’s modern masterpiece ‘The Assassination Of Jesse James’ and, with the addition of interviews with the final assassins, it should make for insightful and compelling viewing. Further, it’ll be interesting to see what is asked of the assassins as their concluding words could have a lot to say about the film and where Winterbottom is coming from with regards to the story of Stern and the British authorities (represented by policemen played by Sturgess and Macfadyen) that plays out onscreen for the 100 or so minutes beforehand.

Shooting on “The Promised Land” is slated to begin this fall on location in Palestine.