The Pigeon Tunnel

Errol Morris conducted the last interview with David Cornwell, who wrote as John le Carré. According to Cornwell's sons the conversation was conceived from the start as a swan song, and the writer knew it would be his final significant interview. The film's axis is not espionage but the father. Ronnie Cornwell was a professional confidence man who raised his son inside continuous lying, went to prison and left debts, and every plausible, charming, untrustworthy man in le Carré's fiction came out of that. While drawing the connection, Morris also presses on the writer's own account of himself, and the best moments are the ones where Cornwell chooses not to answer. Morris uses his usual apparatus, with archive footage and dramatised inserts between the questions. The title comes from a shooting club in Monte Carlo his father took him to: pigeons released from a tunnel take off, and the ones not shot fly back to the same roof. It premiered at Telluride on 1 September 2023, arrived on Apple TV Plus on 20 October and made the National Board of Review's list of the year's five best documentaries. Who it is for: readers of le Carré and admirers of Errol Morris's interview cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting information about the world of espionage, since the film is about how a writer assembled himself.