Sir Thomas More by William Shakespeare

Prompted by the ongoing refugee crisis and Trump's recent scandalous treatment of immigrant families, Caviar director Ollie Wolf was moved to complete a passion project he's been working on making for a year.

Xenophobia sweeps the nation as 64,000 foreigners arrive on British shores seeking better lives and are blamed for diluting native culture and taking local jobs. Sounds familiar? No it’s not a post-Brexit vote borough in Thanet, it’s medieval England, where tensions are rising over the number of refugees seeking asylum in the capital, having fled wars, plague and discrimination on the continent. When anti-immigrant riots break out in London on 1 May 1517, Thomas More, the city’s deputy sherif, makes an impassioned speech, trying to calm the angry mob.

Shakespeare was tasked with re-drafting a manuscript of More’s call for empathy, but the piece was never performed in his lifetime – being banned by the Queen’s censor who feared it might incite more rioting. When Wolf heard a recording of Sir Ian McKellan performing the monologue, he was moved by the speech’s relevance today. “With everything that was happening in Calais at the time it felt it was a speech that needed to filmed," says Wolf. 

The film cleverly uses Shakespeare’s text as the script for a contemporary TV news broadcast. A sympathetic journalist appeals for clemency for the “wretched strangers” while interviewing an anti-immigration politician who rails against the country being “infected” by foreigners.   

Wolf states: "We shot the film in a single 3-minute take within the Jungle camp itself. We were extremely lucky to have the help and support of Care4Calais who made sure camp residents where comfortable with us filming."