EXCLUSIVE:Kelly Reilly and Tim Roth have signed to co-star in John Hay’s thriller Lives in Secret, inspired by the true story of Second World War spy-mistress Vera Atkins.

Kelly Reilly

Paris-based Other Angle is launching the project, formerly titled Night and Fog, in Cannes.

Lives in Secret is due to start shorting in the northern English region of Yorkshire in August. It is produced by Jeremy Bolt (Resident Evil).

Adapted from Sarah Helm’s A Life in Secrets, the film tells the true story of Atkins, a British intelligence who trained and dispatched hundreds of agents to Occupied France.

After the war, Atkins made it her personal mission to ascertain the fate of all the female agents she lost. The film revolves around her interrogation of Gestapo officer Hans Kieffer about what happened to a young Muslim spy.