Brexit: The Uncivil War

Late 2015. Dominic Cummings is put in charge of the leave campaign for the European Union referendum. He despises politicians, arrives late to meetings and rejects conventional campaigning. He works with data firms instead and targets millions of people who have never voted. Then he finds three words: take back control. The subject is not politics but how a message is found. The best scene is a focus group; the discussion goes out of control and in that room Cummings understands that the issue is not argument but anger. The form is fast: split screens, data visualisations, phone calls. The opposing campaign is shown as heavy and institutional. The production caused a hard argument in Britain. Critics said it built its narrative entirely around Cummings, portrayed him as close to a genius and pushed concrete problems with the campaign, such as illegal spending, into the background. It was made for Channel 4 and shown in America on HBO. Toby Haynes directs. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Cummings and Rory Kinnear the director of the opposing campaign. Who it is for: viewers curious about the mechanics of political campaigning and data targeting. Who it is not for: anyone expecting balance; the film sits in one side's room and does not take the other seriously.