There is a conceit at the heart of Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth’s feature documentary Broken English, sold by I Wonder Pictures (Italy), that the life and work of Marianne Faithfull, Britain’s very own grand-dame of counter-culture, is being catalogued by the imagined Ministry of Not Forgetting, a cinematic institution run by Tilda Swinton and one that is tasked with the business of gathering vital data and preserving testimony.
“We chose Marianne precisely because her data set is broken,” Swinton says of her Ministry’s purpose, in the film. “AI [that is] trained on broken data will only amplify the flaws, the biases, the inequalities, the erasures. That’s why we, real-thinking, caring, people need to disrupt the data set, bring in new material.”
And this is exactly what the film sets out to do, in the company of Swinton, actor George Mackay (who plays the Ministry’s ‘record keeper’), and the great Marianne Faithfull herself, who is asked to view a wealth of footage and archive from her life, much of it she had never before seen, and some of the events she had long forgotten.
“The Ministry was Iain and Jane’s idea,” producer Beth Earl tells BDE on the eve of Sundance 2026, where the film is selected for the festival’s Spotlight section. “They loved the idea that an artist towards the end of their life would be looking back on their life story and various achievements, and also have a chance to be a part of the narrative and set the record straight.”
“Having an artist be a part of telling their story feels incredibly powerful and the Ministry allowed us to do that,” she adds. “And I think the Ministry really gave us a way to tell her story and go into areas where maybe she didn’t want to go, or we felt we could handle them in a different light.”
She references the infamous Redlands drugs raid on the house of Keith Richards, orchestrated by the Metropolitan police who were in cahoots with the scurrilous News of the World tabloid. It was an episode Faithfull did not want to talk about, so the Ministry calls in the ‘reinforcements’ as Swinton calls them, a panel of experts who talk lucidly and intelligently about Marianne and her works, annotating the data with key insight and comment.
“I think that there is this moment now in our culture where we’re re-examining how people are remembered, and whoshould be remembered and why are they remembered and what do we remember them for,” says Earl. “We touch on this later as well when Tilda talks about AI and datasets being broken. It’s really important to think about the information we’re putting out there, or the information that was put out there, but maybe [it was] misinformation.”
Pollard and Forsyth restage, in riveting fashion, of some of Faithfull’s songs, most notably Jehnny Beth’s electrifying cover of Why’d You Do It? (as extreme an account of sexual jealousy as you will ever hear) from the 1979 Broken English album.
“Our films aren’t truly documentaries — they’re portraits. Broken English isn’t just a film about Marianne Faithfull — it’s a film of her, made with her,” directors Forsyth and Pollard write in their film notes. “Our film lives in a liminal space, shaped by memory but churned through the mill of the imagination.”
The idea for the film came to producer Earl after she read a magazine article about Faithfull. “This was probably, I guess, close to five years ago at this point, but the article talked about all of her incredible achievements, all of the musicians she’d collaborated with, her albums, things she’d come up against in her life, various setbacks – and I just had no idea about her breadth of work and her life story, and instantly felt very compelled to be a part of telling it,” she tells BDE. “So I set about securing the rights and reaching out to her to get her on board, and then once she was on board, I went out to Iain and Jane and asked if they would consider directing it.”
She had been a fan of the directing duo ever since seeing their 20,000 Days on Earth, which world-premiered at Sundance 2014, winning the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award. “Instantly they said, ‘oh, we know all about Marianne, Warren [Ellis, musician and close friend of Nick Cave, who features in 20,000 Days] has told us so much about her,’ and they were very excited, and shortly after came up with this brilliant concept and construct to tell her story.”
The film was made over three years, playing out on an elaborate futuristic set where Marianne watches footage of herself from the 1960s, continually offering comments and annotations, sometimes clarifications. She is aided in this process by Mackay, the whole process overseen by Department Controller Swinton. The two actors (Mackay and Swinton) never met on the set, despite communicating within the scenes, mainly via CC monitors.
There was a two-year gap between their respective work periods on the film, but it was Mackay who was tasked with hands-on, face-to-face interaction with Faithfull.
“George did a lot of prep for it and he really had to know her story inside out,” says Earl. “Iain and Jane, the way that they directed it, he [Mackay] had an earpiece and they would speak to him. And so, depending on her answers, they were able to guide, but also he had to be comfortable and able to navigate. He was acting the role of the record keeper, but he also needed to have part of himself in that role and empathising with her responses and emotions…George was a great choice because he’s very sharp and smart and also lovely and kind. And I think that combination made him perfect for the role.”
Faithfull died in January 2025, before the film was completed, and before Tilda Swinton came on set to shoot her scenes. “She [Marianne] didn’t see any of the Tilda stuff because that had yet to be, but she had been speaking to Tilda about it and she loved George and she had seen his films before, so she was excited about that. And we had started to talk about the artists coming in who were covering her songs too.” Earl says.
A core element of the film is the recording of Faithfull’s final vocal performance, in a studio together with Nick Cave. “She especially loved the last performance very much. She had a photo up in her room of that, which was lovely.”
Now, the film is set for its US premiere in Sundance’s Spotlight section. “We are beyond excited to get the show filmed there,” says Earl. “I feel like it really is a dream for Iain and Jane to be going back and sharing this film with a Sundance audience – and an American audience – and it feels extra special it being the last year in Park City, so we can’t wait.”
