Michael Winterbottom, the director behind films from Cracker to A Cock and Bull Story, Wonderland to Welcome to Sarajevo, is answering reader questions to mark the 24th anniversary of 24 Hour Party People.
A film about Manchester's music scene
The 2002 film charts Manchester's music scene from the Sex Pistols' legendary 1976 Lesser Free Trade Hall gig through Factory Records, Joy Division, New Order and into the Madchester era of Happy Mondays and the Haçienda. It stars Paddy Considine, Shirley Henderson, Andy Serkis and John Simm, plus Steve Coogan as the late broadcaster and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson.
Winterbottom studied English at Oxford before starting in television in the late 1980s, directing documentaries about Ingmar Bergman and episodes of Boon and Cracker. His feature debut was 1995's Butterfly Kiss, a dark road movie about a serial killer and her lover travelling across northern England.
A career spanning genres
His subsequent films include 1996's Jude, 1997 Bosnian war drama Welcome to Sarajevo, 1999 London ensemble piece Wonderland and 2000 western The Claim. Later work includes the sexually explicit 9 Songs in 2004, literary comedy A Cock and Bull Story (adapted from Tristram Shandy) with Coogan and Rob Brydon, political docudrama The Road to Guantánamo and 2010 noir thriller The Killer Inside Me.
He has also regularly reunited with Coogan, most famously for 2010's The Trip and its sequels, in which Coogan and Brydon travelled, ate and attempted increasingly competitive celebrity impressions – including a Michael Caine-off that became almost as famous as the films themselves. The trio are now making a fifth instalment, The Trip to the Northern Lights, which sees Coogan and Brydon eating, bickering and impersonating their way through Scandinavia and the Nordic countries.
How to submit questions
With 24 Hour Party People back in cinemas 24 years after its original release, Winterbottom is joining readers for a chat. Questions should be submitted by 6pm on Sunday 4 October, and answers will be printed as part of the reader interview section. 24 Hour Party People is in UK cinemas from 9 October and on 4K UHD Disc from 26 October.
