David Farnor | On 21, Apr 2015

Russell Brand’s new documentary, The Emperor’s New Clothes, is heading to UK cinemas and VOD this week.

The comedian and activist has joined forces with director Michael Winterbottom to make the polemical film about the financial crisis and gross inequality the UK currently faces. Starting with the genesis of today’s economic policies, with the arrival of Milton Friedman’s school of thought in Reagan’s leadership and Thatcher’s UK, the film explores how these policies have come to dominate the western world. The rich have got richer; where a CEO of a major British company used to earn 10 times the average wage of his workers, now they earn 200 times. According to Oxfam, the richest 80 people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion. It would now take 300 years for the average cleaner, cleaning the offices of his senior boss, to earn the same salary taken home by the same boss last year.

Using a mixture of documentary, interviews, archive footage and comedy, Russell Brand takes us from his hometown Grays in Essex to the heart of London and on to the Big Apple.

The documentary premieres tonight (Tuesday 21st April) in cinemas nationwide with a live Q&A (audiences can tweet in questions @Emps_NewClothes). It will then be released by Studiocanal on VOD platforms on Wednesday 22nd April, including blinkbox, before landing in select cinemas on Friday 24th April.

Here’s a clip from the movie:

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