The Weinstein Company (TWC) is proud to announce today that the Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF)) will be awarding their recently released film THE IMITATION GAME with two of the festival’s highest accolades this year. The film, which has been the recipient of several festival awards since it first showed in Telluride and Toronto earlier this year, will be named Best Picture and Outstanding Ensemble Cast by NBFF. It will be screening at the historic Lido Theater in Newport Beach in January with members of the Orange County Film Society (OCFS) and select members of the film’s cast and crew set to attend. In addition, NBFF, along with their partners Screen International, Visit Newport Beach California and OCFS, will host a pre-BAFTA private reception at the ME Hotel in London on Thursday, February 5th with members of the cast also in attendance.
TWC released THE IMITATION GAME in select theaters on November 28th and nationwide on December 25th. The film, which was produced by Black Bear Pictures and Bristol Automotive, has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture, Best Motion Picture Actor in a Drama, Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score. It was also included in the American Film Institute’s top 11 films of the year and nominated for three Screen Actors Guild Awards. Directed by Morten Tyldum, produced by Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky and Teddy Schwarzman, with a screenplay by Graham Moore, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance and Mark Strong.
Commented director Tyldum: “Our tremendous and heartfelt thanks go to the Newport Beach Film Festival and their partners Screen International and the Orange County Film Society. Their support is so important to us and we’re incredibly proud to receive such prestigious honors from them for THE IMITATION GAME this year. This is a film that recognizes a man who was a hero and saved lives, but was sadly persecuted in his lifetime. We are grateful to be shining a long overdue light on him.”
“After the Newport Beach Film Festival team screened THE IMITATION GAME at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was abundantly clear that this film and its cast were standouts”, said Gregg Schwenk, CEO and Executive Director of NBFF. “The film was exceptional at portraying the legacy and contribution of Allen Turing and the code breakers.”
During the winter of 1952, British authorities entered the home of mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to investigate a reported burglary. They instead ended up arresting Turing himself on charges of ‘gross indecency’, an accusation that would lead to his devastating conviction for the criminal offense of homosexuality – little did officials know, they were actually incriminating the pioneer of modern-day computing. Famously leading a motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers, he was credited with cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany’s World War II Enigma machine. An intense and haunting portrayal of a brilliant, complicated man, THE IMITATION GAME follows a genius who under nail-biting pressure helped to shorten the war and, in turn, save millions of lives.
