Red Joan (2018) on Netflix
In 2000, elderly Joan Stanley is arrested in London, accused of passing nuclear secrets to Soviet Russia. The charge reaches back to her Cambridge years and the socialists she met there.
- Netflix2.4/5
- IMDb6.4/1015,956 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes30%
Trailer
Plot summary
As a young physics student at Cambridge University, Joan Smith befriends Sonya and Leo Galich, two Russian Jewish friends who draw her toward socialism and radical politics, and she falls in love with Leo, an intense intellectual. Sonya calls him her cousin. The wartime Tube Alloys project, Britain's atomic bomb program, recruits Joan, and she meets the scientist Max Davis there. Leo urges her to pass information to the Soviet Union; she turns him down and ends the relationship. Joan and Max sail to Canada to continue atomic bomb research. In 2000, she is arrested in London and accused of passing information to communist Russia in the 1940s.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Red Joan (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Red Joan is based on Jennie Rooney's novel, itself inspired by Melita Norwood, a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association who supplied the Soviet Union with nuclear secrets that hastened its development of nuclear bomb technology.
- Farnborough Historic Wind Tunnels served as a nuclear reactor building, and Senate House in London doubled for the Université de Montréal.
