My short spy film “The Dry Cleaner” will screen online for one week from 8th August 2021  for free, as part of the SPYFLIX Film festival “Spotlight series”.

The Dry Cleaner was awarded an “Honourable mention” by the judges who watched and selected the film.

Judges for the film festival include Simon Cornwell (son of John Le Carré) producer of BBC hit The Night Manager, Joe Wisenberg creator of hit spy show The Americans Alex Cary producer and writer of hit tv shows Homeland and Legends, former CIA officer John Sipher, and actor Laila Robins from Homeland, The Boys and The Blacklist and Hedda Archbold producer of Kermode on Film, Girls on Film and Film Stories Magazine.

The Dry Cleaner is contemporary spy drama in which a British intelligence officer tries to recruit a Middle Eastern student who has links to a revolutionary group back in her home country.

The film takes its name from “Dry Cleaning” which is a counter-surveillance technique used by spies to find out if they are being followed. It’s a vital action used by intelligence officers before meeting a covert source. In the field “dry cleaning” can be a matter of life and death.

“The Dry Cleaner is an excellent short film. Fascinating plot. 

Very well executed. Few post-9/11 spy thrillers show the dangers and risks of counterterrorism work through the perspective of the asset as well as the handler. The Dry Cleaner raises the bar for the spy movie genre. 

I look forward to seeing more good things from director Chris Carr.”

— Yaya J. Fanusie, former CIA Counterterrorism Analyst

“The film shows excellent tradecraft. 

It depicts the difficulty of walking the line between cultivating and protecting a human being who is placing his/her trust in you, but also recruiting a source who is needed to provide key information. It also shows the importance of operational security. 

The counter surveillance scenes in the film are well done, in fact, there aren’t very many pop culture representations of SDRs that I can say are better than this.”

— Dr. Vince Houghton, Historian & Former Curator at the International Spy Museum

“The Dry Cleaner could be used by the security services as a training film on espionage. 

The tradecraft is brilliantly executed, and the sense of betrayal grabs you from the beginning. 

Chris Carr has done a wonderful job of setting the tone for something that you learn early on in the world of intelligence, i.e., there are no friendly intelligence services."

— Fred Burton, former State Department special agent and New York Times best-selling author.