In the Line of Fire: Personal Memories of a Documentary Filmmaker

Internationally acclaimed and award-winning documentary filmmaker Antony Thomas focuses on subjects that affect him deeply over a 52-year career and remain relevant to this day; the pernicious effects of racism and misogyny, the ‘seamless border’ between espionage and crime, the last colonial wars in Africa, the conflicts in the Middle East, the rise of Islamic extremism, the politicisation of Evangelical Christians in the United States and the origins of fake news, to mention a few.

Thomas brings these disparate experiences together by taking a very personal approach and using every opportunity to take us ‘behind the camera’ where he shares the difficulties, the moral problems and the dangers that he and his colleagues sometimes faced, including the moment when the entire team was condemned to death in a military camp in Zambia.

Eleven years later, Thomas was back in the line of fire, coping with vicious attacks from MPs and sectors of the press, following the broadcast of his controversial docudrama Death of a Princess.

A review in the American journal Cineaste concludes with, “In the Line of Fire is one of the finest books written in the last years about documentary practice and its goals. It is a must-read for all those interested in nonfiction film.”