Film, TV production and content companies including Big Talk Productions, BBC Worldwide and Our Kind of Traitor Ltd have been flocking to London’s Congress Centre in recent months to use the central London Grade II-listed modernist venue as both a film location and a venue for meetings and script readings.
At the end of March, stars including Ewan McGregor, Damian Lewis and Naomie Harris came to the venue to film scenes for their latest movie Our Kind of Traitor. The film is an adaptation of John le Carré’s novel from a script by Hossein Amini, directed by BAFTA®-winning director, Susanna White. An English couple, Perry (McGregor) and Gail (Harris), are taking a holiday in Marrakech when a chance meeting with Russian millionaire (Stellan Skarsgard) propels them on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps, to the murkiest cloisters of the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain’s Intelligence Establishment.
According to Adam Richards, Supervising Location Manager on the film, “We wanted to give our world of MI5 a more contemporary feel, rather than stuffy establishment which is how it is normally portrayed, and Congress Centre fitted the bill perfectly with its striking modernist spaces.”