The Pigeon Tunnel

Q&A with Errol Morris on Sept. 30

Pioneering documentarian Errol Morris applies his signature aesthetic to a riveting portrait of John le Carré, whose novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy forever changed the way we perceive espionage in popular culture and the world. Adapting le Carré’s 2016 nonfiction memoir of the same name, The Pigeon Tunnel—named for the cement paddock where the birds are kept before being released as shooting targets for sportsmen—traces with thriller-like precision the fascinating life of the British-Irish author, born David Cornwell, from a motherless childhood overseen by a con-man father to his travels to Berlin and his eventual fame as the 20th century’s preeminent writer of existential, intricately detailed spy stories that were realist, politically acute alternatives to James Bond. At the center of the film, however, is the relationship between the main interview subject, recorded not long before his death in 2020, and his interrogator: for le Carré, submitting to Morris’s camera becomes a willful act of “self-examination,” a chance to question the nature of truth and what can—or refuses to—be revealed behind a placid outward exterior. An Apple Films release.

All NYFF61 feature documentaries are presented by:

  Closed captions and audio descriptions are available with our capti-view devices for every screening in the Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center. 

Recommended Film Comment reading:

• Interview: Errol Morris on Wormwood (Part One)
• Interview: Errol Morris on Wormwood (Part Two)
• The Film Comment Podcast: Errol Morris Election Special

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