Peter Watkins is a British director born in 1935 ; he studied in Walles and then in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He began his career as a film director with a series of self-financed pacifist films, in which he employed non professional cast. He directed his first feature, "The Field of Red", in 1958 about the American Civil War in the United States. "Aftenlandet" was made in 1977 for the Danish Film Institute.