First-look image: Judi Dench in Red Joan

Here’s the first look image of Judi Dench in spy drama Red Joan in which she and Sophie Cookson (Kingsman: The Secret Service) jointly star as a woman accused of being the KGB’s longest-serving British spy.

Based on Jennie Rooney’s best-selling novel of the same name, the film is inspired by the remarkable true story of Melita Norwood and co-sars Stephen Campbell Moore, Tom Hughes, Ben Miles, and Tereza Srbova.

2000: Joan Stanley (Dench) is living in contented retirement in suburbia at the turn of the millennium. Her tranquil life is suddenly disrupted when she’s arrested by MI5 and accused of providing intelligence to Communist Russia.

1938: Joan (Cookson) is a Cambridge physics student who falls for young communist Leo Galich (Hughes) and through him, begins to see the world in a new light.

Working at a top-secret nuclear research facility during WWII, Joan comes to the realisation that the world is on the brink of mutually assured destruction.

Confronted with an impossible question – what price would you pay for peace? – Joan has to choose between betraying her country and loved ones or saving them.

Red Joan is a Trademark Films production in association with Cambridge Picture Company, and is directed by Trevor Nunn, produced by David Parfitt and co-produced by Ivan Mactaggart and Alice Dawson.