Factual error: On arriving on the beach at Dunkirk, Robbie is told of the sinking of the Lancastria and the loss of 3000 men. This event actually occurred 17 days later on June 17 1940.
Atonement (2007)
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Directed by: Joe Wright
Starring: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn, Ailidh Mackay, Julia West
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Briony Tallis, aged 13: Cee?
Cecilia Tallis: Yes?
Briony Tallis, aged 13: Why don't you talk to Robbie anymore?
Cecilia Tallis: I do. We just move in different circles, that's all.
Trivia: In the DVD commentary, Director Joe Wright reveals a lucky fluke that got caught on camera during the scene just before Robbie (James McAvoy) discovers the school girls massacre. At the point where he removes his helmet, the weather was cloudy. As he looks up the sky, the sun started shining, and then got cloudy again the moment he put his head down.
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Chosen answer: Not as such. The only systematic massacre of civilians in the Dunkirk campaign was in the Flemish village of Vingkt, where the German 377th Infantry Regiment had fought a fierce battle against the Belgian Chasseurs Ardennais. On 27/28 May 1940, the Germans took revenge on the civilian population and shot some 40 men and boys in the village, including eight elderly men who had sheltered in a convent's cellars. They argued that anyone found in a building the Chasseurs had used was liable for execution. The film exaggerates for dramatic effect - dead schoolboys are more poignant than dead old men - but there is a core of truth in the story.