The Rotary Foundation and Twentieth Century Fox have negotiated an exclusive access to the cold war thriller Bridge Of Spies before its official Australian release. 

Bridge of Spies is based on the true story of a lawyer who found himself thrust into the Cold War in the 1950s when the CIA sent him to negotiate the release of a spy plane pilot captured by Soviet forces

Hanks plays James Donovan, who is nominated by his firm to defend a Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance).

When the young pilot of a prototype US spy plane is shot down over Soviet Russia and imprisoned and a young American economics student studying in Berlin is imprisoned by the East German police, Donovan is sent to Germany to negotiate a two-for-one exchange, offering Abel’s release in return for the freedom of the American prisoners. 

The film’s title refers to the bridge across the Havel River between East and West Berlin where captured spies were exchanged during the Cold War.

Bridge of Spies is co-scripted by Ethan and Joel Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, True Grit) and British writer Matt Charman.  

Following its world premier last week, Bridge of Spies is already being touted as an Oscar nominee.  

Bridge of Spies will screen at the Mudgee Town Hall cinema on Wednesday, October 21, the evening before its national release. 

This special screening is presented by the Rotary Clubs of Mudgee and Mudgee Sunrise to raise funds for the Rotary Foundation’s PolioPlus campaign, which aims to eradicate polio globally. 

Tickets are $20 for adults, which includes wine and cheese before the movie. Tickets are available at the Mudgee Guardian, Perry Street, Mudgee (next to the Wineglass) or at the door unless sold out. 

Doors open 7pm. The movie will screen at 7.30pm.

Funds raised through the Mudgee screening of Bridge of Spies will help Rotary International to continue its 30-year campaign to eliminate polio across the world. 

Polio is a crippling and sometimes fatal disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.

Since Polio Plus began in 1985, Rotary has helped to immunise more than 2.5 billion children against polio. 

In 1988, Rotary joined with the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF and other partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). 

At that time, polio was endemic in 125 countries, paralysing more than 1000 children every day. 

Since then, the incidence of polio has plummeted from about 350,000 cases a year to 36 confirmed so far in 2015. 

Last month, WHO announced that Nigeria has been declared polio free, leaving only two countries - Pakistan and Afghanistan – where the wild polio virus has not been eliminated. 

According to experts, Pakistan will prove the biggest challenge to global eradication efforts, as  it accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the world’s cases in 2014. 

Rotary International has partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to continue working to eliminate polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to support efforts to keep other at-risk countries polio-free.

Until 2018, every dollar donated by Rotary to the PolioPlus campaign will be matched by the Gates Foundation.