Radhika Apte-starrer A Call To Spy to be released in theatres later this year

Radhika Apte’s international project, A Call To Spy, directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher, been picked by IFC Films for a theatrical release later this fall in North America.

The period drama, also starring Stana Katic and Sarah Megan Thomas, highlights the unsung heroics of female spies during Word War II.

Apte announced the news on Facebook. At a time when most films are heading straight to digital platforms, this is good news, indeed, for the theatrical business.

The film’s female stars Apte, Thomas and Katic all play real-life spies who played a valuable part in the Special Operations Executive, a spy agency commissioned by Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill.

Apte plays Noor Inayat Khan, the first Muslim female wireless operator for Britain, while Thomas, also the writer and co-producer of the film, is the American spy Virginia Hall. Katic plays the recruiter Vera Atkins who was the real-life inspiration for Miss Moneypenny in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series.

“These three women, driven by the stakes of humanity, had a choice to collaborate, do nothing, or resist,” director Pilcher said in a report on Deadline.com. “Their stories are more relevant today than ever. Happy to be working with IFC Films, a longtime champion of independent vision.”

Pilcher, an Oscar-nominated producer on Cutie And The Boxer (2013), is making her feature directorial debut with the upcoming project. A Call To Spy already had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year and has picked up awards at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the Whistler Film Festival.

The drama also stars Linus Roache, Rossif Sutherland, Marc Rissmann, Samuel Roukin and Laila Robins.