With it being under two years since her break-out roles in A Royal Affair and Anna Karenina, Alicia Vikander is putting her rising star status to good use, with no less than six forthcoming films to her name. She has the major studio films (The Seventh Son, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), the romantic drama (Tulip Fever), the promising sci-fi drama (Ex Machina), the intriguing crime indie (Son of a Gun), and today brings a look at her WWI biographical drama, Testament of Youth.
Seen above in the first still, Vikander plays Vera Brittain, a young Englishwoman who not only experienced World War I from the nurse’s perspective, but also chronicled those trials in her seminal memoir. Coming from director James Kent, the cast also includes Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Colin Morgan, Dominic West, Emily Watson, Hayley Atwell, and Anna Chancellor, and as we await a release date, one can check out the synopsis below.
Vera Brittain, irrepressible, intelligent and free-minded, overcomes the prejudices of her family and hometown to win a scholarship to Oxford. With everything to live for, she falls in love with her brother’s close friend Roland Leighton as they go to university to pursue their literary dreams. But the First World War is looming and as the boys leave for the front Vera realises she cannot sit idly by as her peers fight for their country, so volunteers as a nurse. She works tirelessly, experiencing all the grief of war, as one by one her closest friends are all killed and the pillars of her world shattered. But, an indefatigable spirit, Vera endures, rediscovers love and returns to Oxford, irrevocably changed, yet determined to create a world in which such a war can never take place again.
Testament of Youth is expected to be released next year.