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Minghella's low-life eye opener
FILM director Antony Minghella has based his latest film on his experiences of crime in Camden.
The South Hill Park resident, who won an Oscar for The English Patient, appeared at a Q&A and screening of his latest film Breaking and Entering at the Screen on the Hill on Saturday.
And he told cinema-goers that being burgled regularly helped inspire the film, which is about the seedy side of London.
"During the making of Cold Mountain we bought an old chapel in Primrose Hill to use as offices. It's quite a strange area, like all of London it has all kinds of territories overlapping," he said. "We would get middle of the night calls and the police would say you have been burgled for the 14th or 15th time.
"The people that we met in the course of dealing with these burglaries were so unique. There was a CID officer from Camden who was so unexpected and unusual. I based Ray Winstone's character on this officer in the film."
The film is set around King's Cross and Primrose Hill and the offices of an architect played by Jude Law are repeatedly burgled.
Minghella said filming on local estates really opened his eyes. "You realise people who live in the same postcodes whose expectations, lifestyles and opportunities are completely different from you own. People who will never come into this cinema and who live in NW3," he said.
"The movie taught me that there is not equal opportunity in Camden or North London or NW3. There are people living terrible, deprived lives in these postcodes and estates - some of the places where we shot the film - it doesn't reflect well on us that these housing conditions co-exist with our housing conditions. I realised how much I didn't know about the quality of life experience within our communities."
o Do you know the Camden copper who inspired Anthony Minghella? Call our newsdesk on 020-7433 6217.
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