A story of love, war and remembrance

It is an unforgettable and profound story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman's point of view.

The story begins in the Edwardian spring of 1914, with Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander) - a youthful feminist, free-minded and irrepressible - determined to sit exams for Oxford, against her conservative parents' wishes. She is encouraged and inspired by her brother and his friends, particularly the brilliant Roland Leighton, who shares her dream of being a writer. But her hopes for Oxford with Roland turn to dust as war is declared and all the young men enlist; she herself gives up her dream of writing, and becomes a nurse.

What follows is a story of heightened, urgent love between Vera and Roland - interrupted by the war, as Vera moves closer and closer to the front, eventually nursing German soldiers, who help her to recognise the futility of war.

Youthful love buffeted by fatal losses

Through Vera we see youthful love buffeted by fatal losses and the overpowering tide of history, as one by one those closest to her are lost to the war.

Yet Vera's story is also one of survival, as she returns from the war determined to find a new purpose, and to keep faith with those she has lost, spurring her towards a powerful act of remembrance.

In 2008, Christine Langan and Joe Oppenheimer of BBC Films were exploring the BBC archive for dramas with film potential and, with the centenary of World War 1 looming, their attention turned to the classic 1979 BBC series of Testament of Youth. Rosie Alison of Heyday Films had recently worked with Christine Langan on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and when she learned of the BBC's exploratory conversations with the Vera Brittain estate, she made a strong plea for Heyday to produce the film.

Alison, like Langan, had fallen under the spell of both Vera Brittain's memoir and the original television series as a schoolgirl - and had retained a passionate attachment to Testament of Youth. BBC Films agreed that Rosie Alison and David Heyman (of Heyday Films) should be the producers for the film.

Alison and BBC Films undertook an extensive search for writers, before Juliette Towhidi was chosen. Although previously best known for a very different film, Calendar Girls, Towhidi made a passionate pitch to write the script.

Emotional intensity and rigorous intelligence

Says Alison: "Juliette just stood out - she had the emotional intensity and rigorous intelligence to tackle the big story because it's not only the book of Testament of Youth, there were also Vera's diaries, and a wonderful collection of correspondence between Vera and the men in her life. There's an overwhelming wealth of material to draw from, including Roland Leighton's frontline poetry, and we needed to find a writer who could tackle all that and not get lost within it."

Juliette Towhidi says: "My task was to translate Vera's memoir into a screenplay, which for me meant sticking to the book - that was my beginning and end point for research. I read and re-read and re-read the book and because I come from a journalistic background it is in my DNA to research things thoroughly. I did a lot of research around the First World War, always from a civilian perspective and, of course, discussing her with Shirley Williams (Vera's daughter) and Mark Bostridge, (Vera's biographer) really brought her to life for me."

While it was decided not to use a literal first person narrator, Vera's first person voice is implied through the use of her letters (such an important aspect of Vera's memoir). Says Alison: "Over two or three years, Juliette's script evolved to achieve that balance between the big historical story and Vera's personal journey. We didn't want a stately biopic; we wanted to make an intimate film where you really felt the interiority of Vera on her extraordinary journey from youth and hope through the war and its losses, and out the other side to a kind of a reawakening of the value and purpose of her life. Juliette brought to the script both Vera's inner life, and the bigger picture of the times."

Says Towhidi: "It's a little bit like one of the great Russian novels in the sense that you have individuals experiencing a great tide of history that they are powerless to do anything about. Vera's very personal journey set against this extraordinary epic backdrop of the war is what I think makes the story really special. The fact that she struggled with different forms of expressing her experience - she began by trying to write it as a totally fictionalised novel, and then ended up writing a very personal first-hand account. I think that's actually what gives the book its power. You feel the truth of it."

Read more about this film and other new releases at www.writingstudio.co.za