The Luzhin Defence
Synopsis
Discovering his prodigious talent in a boyhood overshadowed by his parents' failing marriage, Luzhin's lyrical passion for chess has become his refuge and rendered the real world a phantom.
Already matched up by her family to the very suitable Comte de Stassard, when Natalia (Emily Watson) meets Luzhin she is drawn to the erratic genius and offers him a glimpse outside of his chess obsession. But it is a world he is not equipped to deal with, and his two worlds collide to tragic effect.
Details
- Year
- 2001
- Type of project
- Features
- Format
- 35mm
- Director
-
Marleen Gorris
- Producer
- Jody Patton
- Executive Producer
- Jody Patton
- Editor
- Michael Reichwein
- Screenwriter
- Peter Berry
- Director of Photography
- Bernard Lutic
- Sound
- Peter Glossop
- Composer
- Alexandre Desplat
- Principal cast
- John Turturro, Emily Watson, Geraldine James, Stuart Wilson, Christopher Thompson, Fabio Sartor
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Renaissance Films
Contact: Stephen Evans34-35 Berwick Street
London W1F 8RP
UK
T +44 020 7287 5190
Sales Company
Renaissance Films
Contact: Bill Stephens34-35 Berwick Street
London W1F 8RP
UK
T +44 020 7487 5122
Page updates
This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.
See also
You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.
Dread
Director: Gabe Gabriel, Loren Loubser
Year: 2026
Soft-spoken transmasc driver, Toni, is used to dealing with an array of strange customers in their day-to-day work transporting locals and tourists through the economically divided City of Cape Town in their late father’s vintage Daimler. But when Claudia, a German digital nomad with blonde dreadlocks, offloads a traumatic story on a short ride across town, Toni’s car becomes dangerously possessed with Claudia’s invisible trauma demon. Inside Out Film Festival 2026 Wicked Queer: Boston's LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2026
Welcome
Director: Maryam Hamidi
Year: 2026
A famous Black actor accepts a role in a lucrative government film, but when he learns he’s starring in a welcome video for a British Internment camp, he is confronted by the devastating cost of his political indifference.
The Country
Director: Ella Grace Kennedy
Year: 2026
In an extremist religious commune where masturbation is deemed murder, a teenage boy struggles under the harsh laws imposed upon men. Assigned to work in the communal laundry wash, he must continue to adhere to the doctrine of ‘No Reckless Abandonment’, even as doubt and fear threaten to consume him.