The Greengrass Papers

Rabble-rouser. Trouble-maker. Speaker of truth to power. Released to coincide with his 13th feature, The Greengrass Papers reveals how Greengrass came to be venerated as a game-changing director.

In 2004, Paul Greengrass’s adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s spy thriller, The Bourne Supremacy, gave the shooting of action films an entirely new cinematic syntax — urgent, visceral, immersive, immediate — that everyone rushed to replicate, including the Bond and Mission Impossible franchises.

A veteran of Granada TV’s groundbreaking current affairs programme, World in Action, Greengrass uses documentary techniques to imbue his thrillers and docudramas with the heat and crackle of chaotic, fast-moving, real-life events. This is the first time he has been involved in a book around his work, and he has given exclusive access to Tom Shone to share the story of the revolution he brought to Hollywood filmmaking, which is showcased here alongside never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photographs.

As well as a portrait of a filmmaker, The Greengrass Papers is a deep-dive into espionage, assassination and the political violence that Greengrass has laid bare in his films, bringing these worlds to the screen with more visceral power than any other British director working today.