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Ironbark is one of 2020s anticipated movies. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the MI6 handler of a Russian spy who may have helped prevent nuclear war

Humans

29 January 2020

By Chris Baraniuk

New Scientist Default Image — A control room at a Soviet nuclear missile base outside Moscow

Ironbark

Directed by Dominic Cooke

THE cold war was about to get messy and two people were in the thick of it. Ironbark, the gripping story of Greville Wynne, a UK businessman recruited by MI6, and Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Penkovsky, premiered at the Sundance film festival last month.

Taking its title from the codename used by Penkovsky, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Wynne, Merab Ninidze as Penkovsky and Rachel Brosnahan as CIA agent Emily …