Turned Towards the Sun

The astonishing life story of British writer and poet Micky Burn MC.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director Greg Olliver
  • Producer James Dorrian, Nick Golding, Laura Morris, Greg Olliver
  • UK-France-Germany 2012
  • 100 mins
  • Production company Secret Weapon Films

If the astonishing true-life story of British writer and poet Micky Burn MC had been written as a novel, readers would readily accept it as invented. Born in Mayfair in 1912, his father worked for the Royal family. He became the lover of the communist spy Guy Burgess, and would initially be taken in by Nazism, expressing an admiration for Hitler. In 1942, he took part in a daring commando assault on the fortified French port of St Nazaire, where he was captured, and he ended the war a POW in Colditz. He would latterly become a committed Marxist and be credited with saving the life of Audrey Hepburn. American director Greg Olliver, who has previously documented the life of rock star Lemmy, started making this film in 2008, revisiting significant events and places in Burn’s life. Burn is presented here as a candid and witty raconteur, with a sharp mind and vivid recollections. He died in 2010, which leaves Turned Towards the Sun as a fitting eulogy to a remarkable figure.
Michael Hayden

Director statement

This film is about having one last chance to look back on a long, fulfilling life. Michael ‘Micky’ Burn, MC, has a story like no other. I met Micky through a chance encounter and was soon taken by the charm, intelligence and humour vividly on display in his storytelling and the resilience and compassion of his spirit evident in his tales. He was an old man living life quietly on the coast of Wales, but one with a personal history that wove and wound itself around the defining moments of the twentieth century. With surprising candour and zeal, he opened himself to the camera and its imagined audience; allowing us, now, a glimpse of his life remembered from what would become its twilight. Turned Towards the Sun is a portrait of an extraordinary man who lived through extraordinary times. In his story, we see our history and ourselves.
Greg Olliver

Director biography

An independent American-born filmmaker who has worked within and around the music biz, and for both Fuel TV and MTV, he was heavily involved in the ill-fated, subject-suppressed bio-doc Burning Spear: Rise Up (2007-09), and was co-director, with Wes Orshoski, of Lemmy, the portrait of the Motorhead main-man that played in the 2010 LFF. He has also recently completed the psychological thriller Devoured.

Filmography

2002 Recipe for Disaster [TV]
2010 Lemmy [doc; co-dir]
2012 Turned Towards the Sun [doc]; Devoured