UK: 50th London International film festival opens with Kevin Macdonald's Idi Amin drama 'The Last King of Scotland'

London's 50th annual Film Festival has opened with the premiere of Kevin Macdonald's Idi Amin drama 'The Last King of Scotland', with Forest Whitaker playing the Ugandan leader. The film is based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970s. He seized power in a military coup in 1971. Whitaker has been tipped for an Oscar for his performance. "I mean it took me a lot of work, a lot of research and stuff to just try to find the spirit of the man so I started months before we started to film. I think maybe three and a half or so months before we ever began I was working on the part, started working in Los Angeles to get the dialect, to try to learn as much Kiswahili as I could. Try to understand the documentaries and watch the man. Then got to Uganda and started meeting with the all the people who knew him that I could meet. And then, submerge myself in the culture," said Whitaker at the London premiere. His on screen colleagues have heaped praise on him for his performance. "I think what is so special about Forest's performance is that we tend to put people in a box if they're good or bad, evil or wonderful. You have to remember, I think it's important to remember that everyone is a human being and so suddenly in this film Idi Amin is allowed to be a human being again and you see that yes he did horrible horrible things but it came from a place of fear and insecurity and sadness and anger and we all have those feelings. I happen to buy a pair of shoes and eat Haagen Dazs but he committed mass murder. But you know we all deal with those neuroses," said Kerry Washington, who played one of Amin's many wives. "It was a special thing. It was a special thing. What Forest did, the way that Forest portrayed that character the process that he went through. I won't be around that kind of process many times in my career. I don't know if I'll ever achieve that kind of characterisation. And I certainly won't be around that kind of characterisation many times in my career, so to be around it at least once was special," said James McAvoy who plays Amin's fictional doctor Nicholas Garrigan. Heavily pregnant former X-files actress Gillian Anderson commended her co-star for the dedication he gave the role. "I mean there's not many actors that could have done it and the fact that Forest dove in to it to the degree that he did which was too the extreme is incredibly commendable and I think that it shows and I think that the response that he's getting from the effort and the work that he put in to it is worthy of his performance," said Anderson. Other stars attending the event in Leicester Square included McAvoy's girlfriend Anne-Marie Duff, Joseph Fiennes, and Thandie Newton. The festival closes on November 2 with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 'Babel', starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

ITN Source | October 26, 2006

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