Bleecker Street Brings MILITARY WIVES On Hulu And Digital This Memorial Day Weekend, May 22

MILITARY WIVES centers on a group of women from different backgrounds whose partners are away serving in Afghanistan. Faced with their loved ones’ absences, they come together to form the very first military wives choir, helping each other through some of life’s most difficult moments, and quickly find themselves on an international stage. Peter Cattaneo (THE FULL MONTY) directs Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan in this feel-good crowd-pleaser inspired by true events.

Inspired by the popularity of the Military Wives Choirs, the new film Military Wives is loosely based on the real story of a small of group of women who banded together and sparked a worldwide movement that now serves more than 2,300 people across the U.K. and in British military bases abroad.

Producer Rory Aitken, co-founder of 42, was introduced to the phenomenon through choirmaster and broadcaster Gareth Malone’s popular BBC television series “The Choir: Military Wives,” which documented the creation of the second Military Wives Choir in 2011.

The women’s satisfaction with the final screenplay became evident, director Peter Cattaneo says, when several asked to appear in the film as extras. “In the scene where all the soldiers are going off to war, we used as many of them as we could. So when you see that scene, remember that those are real military families saying goodbye.” Although the characters and much of the story is fictionalized, every effort was made to honor the huge sacrifices real military families make every day, says producer Piers Tempest. “I think the best films have a deep truth in them, and that’s what we felt about this story. Nobody talks about them, but military wives are — forgive the pun — the unsung heroes of the armed forces.”

Looking back at his experience, Cattaneo says he learned a lot from the process of making this film and from the real military wives who inspired it. “Military Wives is at its heart a love song to singing and to music,” he reflects. “It’s about the redemptive power of performance in general and about singing specifically. What I look for in telling stories is a specific world that the audience doesn’t know anything about, but that has universal value. I love nuance and behavior and real people, but it’s actually quite hard to find a cinematic landscape in which to tell those stories. It was a really good shoot in terms of the spirit of the crew and the spirit of the ensemble, but it also turned out to be a personal learning journey. “

See it everywhere May 22.

Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and other major VOD platforms Free to stream for Hulu subscribers .