Screening at The Poly, Falmouth: Artist Piers Secunda unveils hidden history of Alderney in new feature film released by Wild Dogs 2025, bringing a new light to the atrocious acts committed by Nazi’s on British soil during World War 2.
Filming in Jersey WW2 © Ghosts Of Alderney
‘Unrelenting Cruelty’ unveiled in Gritty Documentary
In this gritty feature-length documentary, the brilliant minds of a small team give voice to those unheard during Nazi reign in Alderney.
From emotion tell-all stories to the uncovering of never seen before documents in family homes, every secret buried on the small island of Alderney was uncovered by brilliant director Andrew Johnstone and artist Piers Secunda.
Across a 5-year journey tracing stories of the horrors committed again slave labourers on the island in the English channel, Secunda inventively memorialises innocents who were starved beaten and shot in new evidence released.
Vanished reports, and memorials without truth were extensively magnified, bringing light to those forgotten amongst the atrocious acts.
Secunda tells the forgotten and silenced stories of victims shipped to the Channel Islands to become slave workers to build Hitler’s ‘Fortress’ In Alderney, where treatment was the harshest and prisoners were shot for prizes amongst Guard games.
Involving heart aching stories from families of tortured victims, and the horrors brought home by those lucky enough to escape, this gritty feature film is a fantastic exposition of Hitler’s atrocities so close to Britain.
Interviews across countries including Britain, France, and Germany shine light on unsung heroes in Alderney, a story so untold amongst unthinkable horror.
“The academic research deals with lists of names and adding numbers to create a total figure of number of people who came to Alderney. But people aren’t numbers. They’re human beings. They have lives, they have histories, backgrounds.
“And that’s the story that I want to tell.” Shares Secunda in this fantastic documentary.
Filming at Alderney © Ghosts Of Alderney
‘We need a story to tell that’s not in the ordinary.’
Following the first feature at The Poly, Falmouth, director Andrew Johnstone and promotion officer Andy Chatfield opened up a Q&A for the audience.
Johnstone describes the discovery of this film as an exciting, “set a hair running” story, with media outlets sniffing around Johnstone and his team knew this story and the horrors that lurk on idyllic island of Alderney needed to be unveiled.
With huge amounts of research uncovered by artist Piers Secunda on his 5-year journey to uncover hidden truths, Andrew Johnstone and team partnered with Secunda to bring the fantastic documentary that brings so much wrongful acts left to be forgotten, to light.
“We owe an awful lot to him” Johnstone shares in a heart-warming dedication to Secunda.
With a large round of applause, many audience members described the film as “brilliant” and “a fantastic sentiment to the insensitive treatment of Alderney”.
Ghosts of Alderney – Hitler’s Island Slaves is a production from Wild Dog Ltd, a British independent film maker which will feature in The Poly in Falmouth in November.
For more information, please contact Andrew Johnstone at andy@wilddogworld.co.uk or call + 44 7899 921 667