BROKEN ENGLISH

From Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard - the BAFTA nominated directors of the Sundance award-winning “20,000 Days on Earth” - comes BROKEN ENGLISH, a bold documentary portrait of the inimitable singer, songwriter and icon: Marianne Faithfull.

In the final months of her life, music icon Marianne Faithfull looks back - not through straightforward memoir, but through a strange, beautiful collision of memory, imagination and performance.

A survivor, provocateur, and true original, Marianne has spent more than six decades defying expectations - releasing over 35 albums while constantly reinventing herself. Made with her full involvement, BROKEN ENGLISH is an intimate and unflinching exploration of a fractured yet unbreakable life shaped by fame, creativity and relentless public scrutiny.

Narrated by Derek Jacobi it refuses the conventions of the standard music documentary. Faithfull's own reflections are woven together with fictionalised, dreamlike sequences performed by an ensemble cast including Tilda Swinton, Courtney Love, Nick Cave, Suki Waterhouse and George MacKay, each embodying fragments of her life, her music and her myth. The result is less a linear biography than a kaleidoscope - as unruly, unrepentant and singular as its subject.

BROKEN ENGLISH is a fittingly eccentric tribute to one of music's most enduring and complicated icons, blurring the line between documentary and reverie.

Premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival