Peter Kosminsky is an idealist who seeks to make fiction a tool for reality. With him, the fictional treatment of reality has found a master who intelligently combines a rare narrative sense with fine analytical skill in singular works filmed with humanism. For this long committed documentary filmmaker, fiction has become the best way of reaching a wide audience, of stirring public opinion to ponder difficult questions. So it comes as no surprise that each of his films creates controversy, because he denounces institutional failings, the abuses of society, the shortcomings of politics.

He began his career at the BBC, where he made documentaries on war, in Cambodia, in the Falklands, before turning to fiction in the early 90s with Wuthering Heights. He then chose subjects that allowed him to work in a more realistic manner. After The Life and Death of Philip Knight, -the life and death of a young man who is victim of a miscarriage of justice and commits suicide in prison- he made The Dying of the Light, about the murder of a British aid worker working with UNICEF in Somalia.Then came the poignant No Child of Mine, dramatizing the story of an 11-year-old girl who is sexually abused by her family. After making Walking on the Moon, about the bullying of children at school, he directed the outstanding Warriors, in which he described the plight of a British UNPROFOR peacekeeping battalion in Bosnia in 1992. He followed this with the docudrama Innocents, which dealt with experimental surgical practices used on children in Bristol. The Project was a chronicle about the rise to power of Tony Blair's Labor Party, which follows a group of young Labor activists who discover the seedier side of politics. He then directed a feature in Hollywood, White Oleander. He is currently completing for Channel 4 and Arte a film about the suicide of leading microbiologist and former chemical weapons specialist David Kelly, which again raises the question about truth and deception in politics, the manipulation of public opinion and public trust in its institutions.

In his work, his exacting method is to work from facts, to draw on exhaustive documentation and probing inquiry, in order to find the narrative thread, the details that enrich the scenario. Even when recreating reality, the facts he relates are exact, the diagnosis unyielding. He also stands out for his tense, fluid directing style. The elegance of his camera movements, the constant care and aptness with which he renders his settings are admirable. He films without pathos, but with a keen psychological analysis of his characters. Thanks to an acute sense of casting and a demanding direction of actors, his films always are graced with outstanding performances, which gives them that unique stamp of veracity and power in the great tradition of British film realism.

ARTE is very proud to have supported his work for almost a decade now and would like to express its deepest admiration for his accomplishments, which fully justify the tribute the Fipa is paying him this year.

Fiction / TV
1990 : Shoot to Kill
1992 : The Dying of the Light
1992 : Wuthering Heights (Les Hauts de Hurlevent)
1993 : 15: The Life and Death of Philip Knight
1994 : The Dying of the Light
1997 : No Child of Mine
1999 : Walking on the Moon
1999 : Warriors
2000 : Innocents
2002 : The Project (Les Années Tony Blair)
2002 : White Oleander (Laurier blanc)
2005 : David Kelly (titre provisoire)

Documentaries / TV
1986 : New York: the Quiet Catastrophe
1986 : Twilight in Belize
1986 : Death Row: a One-Woman Band
1985 : A Home for Laura
1989 : Cambodia: Children of the Killing Fields
1988 : Murder in Ostankino Precint
1989 : One Day in the Life of Television
1987 : The Falklands War: the Untold Story (Les Malouines, révélation sur une tragédie)
1988 : Afghantsi