Britz
From multi-award winning writer and director Peter Kosminsky (Peacekeepers, The Government Inspector) comes the BAFTA-winning thriller, Britz. This gripping controversial two-part thriller features two young British Muslims, a brother and sister, each pulled in radically different directions by conflicting personal experiences in post 9/11 Britain.
Britz Part 1 premieres Sunday, November 30, 8p.m.ET and Part 2 premieres Monday, December 1, 8p.m.ET
BACKGROUND
On July 7, 2005 four men strapped explosives to their bodies, walked into the heart of London’s transport network and blew themselves up. Fifty-two people were killed, in addition to the bombers - three weeks later, four more men tried to do the same.
None of them were mercenaries or émigrés sent from abroad. No one spotted them, they didn’t stand out. They were born, brought up and educated in Britain - Manchester United supporting, iPod owning, dress-like-us, speak-like-us people. They were Brits.
Britz is a story in two acts. Sohail and Nasima are a young brother and sister born and bred in Bradford, whose constantly overlapping lives end up taking perilously different paths. The first film tells Sohail’s story and the second Nasima’s. From two differing points of view, we watch their hopes and ideals clash with the reality of being a young Muslim in Britain today.
Britz is a fiction, a thriller, but it is set squarely in the real world. It deals with the notion of identity and divided loyalties, the duality of being both British and Muslim. The title of the drama comes from the Muslim predilection for shortening first names and ending them with a zed – Nasima’s friends call her Naz. Britz takes the raft of immigration, anti-terror and anti-social behavior legislation that has been introduced since 2001 and asks what it actually means for citizens on the ground, in particular those who are British and Muslim.
But the idea for the films, according to Peter Kosminsky, started with the July 7 bombings. “It was pretty clear what the next film [after The Government Inspector] should be,” he says. “We had to try to figure out how that could come about.” Britz therefore explores how a young intelligent British Muslim could feel so disenfranchised, so powerless and become so angry at their country of birth that they would commit an extreme and despicable act and ultimately it asks how we can ever hope to prevent such an incident re-occurring.
Kosminsky considered telling the personal stories of the July 7 bombers, in the way he had told the story of government scientist David Kelly in The Government Inspector. But in light of his own experience as a second-generation immigrant, he wanted to look more generally at second-generation Muslim disillusionment with Britain (domestic and foreign policy in particular.) “I decided, in discussion with my colleagues, that the best thing was to fictionalize it – to research the way Muslims think and feel at the moment - and then try to create some fictional characters drawing on what we’d learnt.”
PRODUCTION NOTES
The research was spread over two years, and used a team of researchers, including Ali Naushahi, a second-generation Asian Muslim brought up in Bradford and now working in the television industry. A wide range of interviews with young Muslims were carried out over several months. Kosminsky also consulted at length with organizations like Liberty and Amnesty International on the alienating effects that recent legislation and foreign policy were having on the Muslim community. “It became very apparent from the research our team was carrying out that these were matters about which British Muslims felt very, very deeply.”
Alongside a special Muslim on-set advisor, a significant proportion of the cast were Muslim. Throughout auditions and rehearsals they added nuances and adjustments to dialog, dress and ritual. “It was a constant process of learning,” says Kosminsky. He cites one example that came out of his research into a funeral and burial scene. “I went to the Central Mosque in Leeds, effectively on a location pre-shoot reconnaissance. We came into this room, which resembled an operating theatre, and they explained that in this room the body is ritually washed three times by the same sex relatives and friends of the deceased. They described it to me in great detail, and I thought what an incredibly moving and poignant moment it must be for all those involved. So I went back to the hotel and I wrote such a scene into the script. They very kindly agreed to let us film it in situ.”
Muslim extras for the scene were recruited from the Bradford area. “It turned out that each of them had washed the body of a friend or family member in their lives, one for a close relative just a few weeks before in the very room in which we were to be permitted to film. So we were shooting in the real room, with the words written out by the Imam, with people who had been involved in similar experiences recently in their own lives. It was gut-wrenching – the emotion was incredible because it felt so real.” A chance remark on a pre-shoot reconnaissance had led to what Kosminsky thinks is one of the most powerful sequences in the film, based on a ritual that has rarely if ever been previously filmed. The authenticity of the drama was very important and Peter puts that down to the input of the many Muslims working on the film. “They were very generous with their knowledge and experience and helped us to get it right. We all got caught up in the emotion; it felt like we were in the middle of a documentary.”
FROM THE DIRECTOR
Drawing together the various strands from his research, Kosminsky reached his conclusion: “There’s no doubt – although I don’t think that Tony Blair ever actually admitted it – that the level of alienation caused by Britain’s recent foreign policy is enormous.” British Muslims, he found, feel a strong sense of ‘Ummah’, the collective Islamic consciousness that connects them to other Muslims across the world. “It’s not something they pay lip-service to – it’s in the Koran and it’s central to their faith.” When set against Britishness, he found that young British Muslims were caught between conflicting loyalties - particularly at a time when many of them feel that much of the new anti-terror legislation is aimed at them. It’s this dilemma that he has brought to life in Britz.
It’s also a dilemma that he says he feels himself. As a second-generation British immigrant, Kosminsky sees Sohail and Nasima as personifying his own internal dialectic. “I've felt throughout my life a sort of tug and pull of different allegiances – whether to try to dig in to British society and be as British as I can be or whether to overturn the applecart. That was always going to be a factor and in fact, wanting to write a bit about my own confused sense of identity was part of why I wanted to do it.”
Like all of his films, however, there is also a strong political undercurrent that gives Britz its bite. “I started as a journalist and I made documentaries for many years and I see myself first and foremost as there to ease the curtain back a little and peek behind it. If a film seemed likely to be a gentle meander which wouldn't upset anybody or make people question something about the nature of our society in some way, I probably would walk away from it.”
CAST AND PRODUCTION CREDITS
Sohail - Riz Ahmed
Nasima - Manjinder Virk
Tess - Mary Stockley
Jude - Chinna Wodu
Sabia - Zahra Ahmadi
Writer and Director - Peter Kosminsky
Executive Producers - David Aukin, Hal Vogal
Producer - Steve Clark-Hall
Britz is a Daybreak Pictures Production (a division of Mentorn Media) for Channel 4.
EPISODE SYNOPSES
Part One
Part one follows the story of Sohail who’s a young Muslim Brit, ambitious and college educated. His desire to assimilate into every aspect of contemporary British culture sees him driven into the open arms of MI5 where his first assignment is to help track down a terrorist cell linked to the London Tube bombings of July 7. The enquiry leads him back to his own community in Bradford where no one, not even his closest friends, are above suspicion. Unsure if he is being used to entrap his own, Sohail is forced to question where his loyalties really lie - with his Pakistani Muslim community, or Britain, the country of his birth.
Part Two
Part two follows the story of Nasima, a medical student in Leeds, who unlike her brother, is deeply suspicious of the British establishment. She spends much of her time campaigning against repressive government policies and witnesses at first-hand the relentless targeting of her Muslim neighbors. The turning point is when her best friend kills herself, having being abused, while under arrest, for innocently falling foul of the new anti-terror laws. Nasima is not only forced to question her liberal views but left feeling so angry at, and estranged from, the country of her birth, that she embarks on an extraordinary journey that eventually takes her to a terrorist training camp in north-west Pakistan.
WHAT THE BRITISH PRESS SAID
“Britz is a rarity, a contemporary drama that credits viewers with patience and curiosity.” Guardian
“Kosminsky tells the story in a refreshingly cogent, non-tricksy fashion slowly involving us in the complicated life led by Bradford-born Muslim, Sohail (a restrained but impassioned performance from Riz Ahmed).” Observer
“Kosminsky refuses to moralize or judge. Instead, he skillfully presents a chilling, highly-charged portrait of a rotten, damaged, frightened society.” The Scotsman
“Tackling the sensitive issue of society’s perception of Muslims after September 11, this brilliant drama has you not only hooked but questioning your own beliefs.” Sunday Mirror
“Identifying with Sohail will not be too hard for many of us but, crucially, the final part of this story, shifts to the viewpoint of Sohail's alienated sister, Nasima. It is to the credit of Kosminsky and actress Manjinder Virk that this relentlessly tense thriller has us empathizing with Nasima, too, despite her increasing radicalism…viewers will be in a scary new place that is more than likely an accurate reflection of the perilous state of multicultural Britain today.” Observer
“It’s a brave film for Kosminsky to make, as well as a timely one.” The Independent
“Britz paints a clear picture of how many young Muslims find themselves torn between contemporary British culture and the traditional values of their parents, and how they become radicalized by racism and heavy-handed policing. It also offers a plausible impression of the workings of MI5 - a world of coffee urns, exhausted operatives and stretched resources, miles away from the glib sexiness of MI-5.” The Times
CAST INTERVIEWS
Riz Ahmed as Sohail
Describe Sohail…
“He’s in a transitional space in his life in every sense. He’s going from being a boy to being a man, he’s in an uncertain period between university and work life, and he’s coming from a more working class, ethnically homogenous background and going towards a more middle-class future. He’s always been a bit of a golden boy, top of the class academically, studied law, good at sports. So the system’s always worked for him in a way. He’s someone who feels he fits in very comfortably to what it means to be British. Despite having suffered racist abuse as a youngster he’s been successful enough that that hasn’t ruined his self-esteem or cast a big chip on his shoulder.”
How did you prepare for the role?
“Well Sohail’s a sixth belt in ju-jitsu for a start! So that’s one thing I did – I trained in ju-jitsu quite intensively. I broke two fingers in the process… which I was convinced made me harder!”
How was the other guy?
“He was the head of the National Council of Ju-Jitsu so he was fine. But I thought it was important – if you look at people who train in martial arts it kind of informs their whole body language. Sohail holds himself in a particular way and I thought that was something important to get in to. And by the end of the film I’d earned my first belt and I’m now a third belt myself. Also, I snuck in to law lectures at London University for a couple of weeks, undetected. Again, I just wanted to put myself back in to that university setting - I try to put myself in something close to the character’s situation.”
Are there parallels between you and Sohail?
“On paper I guess you could say he was quite similar. But one of the main thrusts of Britz is to try and get past people ‘on paper’. If you inventorise them and list the things that they are, that isn’t really what defines them – whether that be Muslim, MI5 agent or even terrorist. They’re people ultimately, so I guess even for me I had to get past that and realize that Sohail is a completely different person. And he’s hugely different to me, his whole manner. As a person I think he’s quite a lot more reserved, quite a private guy. I think he has certain old English values of the ideal gentleman ingrained in him on some level. He’s also an inspiring character. It’s not that he’s British and therefore there’s no part of him that has roots in another culture. I think in embracing Britishness he realizes that he’s redefining what it means to be British – and I think that’s why the drama’s called Britz, or that’s how I interpret it anyway.”
None of them were mercenaries or émigrés sent from abroad. No one spotted them, they didn’t stand out. They were born, brought up and educated in Britain - Manchester United supporting, iPod owning, dress-like-us, speak-like-us people. They were Brits.
Britz is a story in two acts. Sohail and Nasima are a young brother and sister born and bred in Bradford, whose constantly overlapping lives end up taking perilously different paths. The first film tells Sohail’s story and the second Nasima’s. From two differing points of view, we watch their hopes and ideals clash with the reality of being a young Muslim in Britain today.
Britz is a fiction, a thriller, but it is set squarely in the real world. It deals with the notion of identity and divided loyalties, the duality of being both British and Muslim. The title of the drama comes from the Muslim predilection for shortening first names and ending them with a zed – Nasima’s friends call her Naz. Britz takes the raft of immigration, anti-terror and anti-social behavior legislation that has been introduced since 2001 and asks what it actually means for citizens on the ground, in particular those who are British and Muslim.
But the idea for the films, according to Peter Kosminsky, started with the July 7 bombings. “It was pretty clear what the next film [after The Government Inspector] should be,” he says. “We had to try to figure out how that could come about.” Britz therefore explores how a young intelligent British Muslim could feel so disenfranchised, so powerless and become so angry at their country of birth that they would commit an extreme and despicable act and ultimately it asks how we can ever hope to prevent such an incident re-occurring.
Kosminsky considered telling the personal stories of the July 7 bombers, in the way he had told the story of government scientist David Kelly in The Government Inspector. But in light of his own experience as a second-generation immigrant, he wanted to look more generally at second-generation Muslim disillusionment with Britain (domestic and foreign policy in particular.) “I decided, in discussion with my colleagues, that the best thing was to fictionalize it – to research the way Muslims think and feel at the moment - and then try to create some fictional characters drawing on what we’d learnt.”
PRODUCTION NOTES
The research was spread over two years, and used a team of researchers, including Ali Naushahi, a second-generation Asian Muslim brought up in Bradford and now working in the television industry. A wide range of interviews with young Muslims were carried out over several months. Kosminsky also consulted at length with organizations like Liberty and Amnesty International on the alienating effects that recent legislation and foreign policy were having on the Muslim community. “It became very apparent from the research our team was carrying out that these were matters about which British Muslims felt very, very deeply.”
Alongside a special Muslim on-set advisor, a significant proportion of the cast were Muslim. Throughout auditions and rehearsals they added nuances and adjustments to dialog, dress and ritual. “It was a constant process of learning,” says Kosminsky. He cites one example that came out of his research into a funeral and burial scene. “I went to the Central Mosque in Leeds, effectively on a location pre-shoot reconnaissance. We came into this room, which resembled an operating theatre, and they explained that in this room the body is ritually washed three times by the same sex relatives and friends of the deceased. They described it to me in great detail, and I thought what an incredibly moving and poignant moment it must be for all those involved. So I went back to the hotel and I wrote such a scene into the script. They very kindly agreed to let us film it in situ.”
Muslim extras for the scene were recruited from the Bradford area. “It turned out that each of them had washed the body of a friend or family member in their lives, one for a close relative just a few weeks before in the very room in which we were to be permitted to film. So we were shooting in the real room, with the words written out by the Imam, with people who had been involved in similar experiences recently in their own lives. It was gut-wrenching – the emotion was incredible because it felt so real.” A chance remark on a pre-shoot reconnaissance had led to what Kosminsky thinks is one of the most powerful sequences in the film, based on a ritual that has rarely if ever been previously filmed. The authenticity of the drama was very important and Peter puts that down to the input of the many Muslims working on the film. “They were very generous with their knowledge and experience and helped us to get it right. We all got caught up in the emotion; it felt like we were in the middle of a documentary.”
FROM THE DIRECTOR
Drawing together the various strands from his research, Kosminsky reached his conclusion: “There’s no doubt – although I don’t think that Tony Blair ever actually admitted it – that the level of alienation caused by Britain’s recent foreign policy is enormous.” British Muslims, he found, feel a strong sense of ‘Ummah’, the collective Islamic consciousness that connects them to other Muslims across the world. “It’s not something they pay lip-service to – it’s in the Koran and it’s central to their faith.” When set against Britishness, he found that young British Muslims were caught between conflicting loyalties - particularly at a time when many of them feel that much of the new anti-terror legislation is aimed at them. It’s this dilemma that he has brought to life in Britz.
It’s also a dilemma that he says he feels himself. As a second-generation British immigrant, Kosminsky sees Sohail and Nasima as personifying his own internal dialectic. “I've felt throughout my life a sort of tug and pull of different allegiances – whether to try to dig in to British society and be as British as I can be or whether to overturn the applecart. That was always going to be a factor and in fact, wanting to write a bit about my own confused sense of identity was part of why I wanted to do it.”
Like all of his films, however, there is also a strong political undercurrent that gives Britz its bite. “I started as a journalist and I made documentaries for many years and I see myself first and foremost as there to ease the curtain back a little and peek behind it. If a film seemed likely to be a gentle meander which wouldn't upset anybody or make people question something about the nature of our society in some way, I probably would walk away from it.”
CAST AND PRODUCTION CREDITS
Sohail - Riz Ahmed
Nasima - Manjinder Virk
Tess - Mary Stockley
Jude - Chinna Wodu
Sabia - Zahra Ahmadi
Writer and Director - Peter Kosminsky
Executive Producers - David Aukin, Hal Vogal
Producer - Steve Clark-Hall
Britz is a Daybreak Pictures Production (a division of Mentorn Media) for Channel 4.
EPISODE SYNOPSES
Part One
Part one follows the story of Sohail who’s a young Muslim Brit, ambitious and college educated. His desire to assimilate into every aspect of contemporary British culture sees him driven into the open arms of MI5 where his first assignment is to help track down a terrorist cell linked to the London Tube bombings of July 7. The enquiry leads him back to his own community in Bradford where no one, not even his closest friends, are above suspicion. Unsure if he is being used to entrap his own, Sohail is forced to question where his loyalties really lie - with his Pakistani Muslim community, or Britain, the country of his birth.
Part Two
Part two follows the story of Nasima, a medical student in Leeds, who unlike her brother, is deeply suspicious of the British establishment. She spends much of her time campaigning against repressive government policies and witnesses at first-hand the relentless targeting of her Muslim neighbors. The turning point is when her best friend kills herself, having being abused, while under arrest, for innocently falling foul of the new anti-terror laws. Nasima is not only forced to question her liberal views but left feeling so angry at, and estranged from, the country of her birth, that she embarks on an extraordinary journey that eventually takes her to a terrorist training camp in north-west Pakistan.
WHAT THE BRITISH PRESS SAID
“Britz is a rarity, a contemporary drama that credits viewers with patience and curiosity.” Guardian
“Kosminsky tells the story in a refreshingly cogent, non-tricksy fashion slowly involving us in the complicated life led by Bradford-born Muslim, Sohail (a restrained but impassioned performance from Riz Ahmed).” Observer
“Kosminsky refuses to moralize or judge. Instead, he skillfully presents a chilling, highly-charged portrait of a rotten, damaged, frightened society.” The Scotsman
“Tackling the sensitive issue of society’s perception of Muslims after September 11, this brilliant drama has you not only hooked but questioning your own beliefs.” Sunday Mirror
“Identifying with Sohail will not be too hard for many of us but, crucially, the final part of this story, shifts to the viewpoint of Sohail's alienated sister, Nasima. It is to the credit of Kosminsky and actress Manjinder Virk that this relentlessly tense thriller has us empathizing with Nasima, too, despite her increasing radicalism…viewers will be in a scary new place that is more than likely an accurate reflection of the perilous state of multicultural Britain today.” Observer
“It’s a brave film for Kosminsky to make, as well as a timely one.” The Independent
“Britz paints a clear picture of how many young Muslims find themselves torn between contemporary British culture and the traditional values of their parents, and how they become radicalized by racism and heavy-handed policing. It also offers a plausible impression of the workings of MI5 - a world of coffee urns, exhausted operatives and stretched resources, miles away from the glib sexiness of MI-5.” The Times
CAST INTERVIEWS
Riz Ahmed as Sohail
Describe Sohail…
“He’s in a transitional space in his life in every sense. He’s going from being a boy to being a man, he’s in an uncertain period between university and work life, and he’s coming from a more working class, ethnically homogenous background and going towards a more middle-class future. He’s always been a bit of a golden boy, top of the class academically, studied law, good at sports. So the system’s always worked for him in a way. He’s someone who feels he fits in very comfortably to what it means to be British. Despite having suffered racist abuse as a youngster he’s been successful enough that that hasn’t ruined his self-esteem or cast a big chip on his shoulder.”
How did you prepare for the role?
“Well Sohail’s a sixth belt in ju-jitsu for a start! So that’s one thing I did – I trained in ju-jitsu quite intensively. I broke two fingers in the process… which I was convinced made me harder!”
How was the other guy?
“He was the head of the National Council of Ju-Jitsu so he was fine. But I thought it was important – if you look at people who train in martial arts it kind of informs their whole body language. Sohail holds himself in a particular way and I thought that was something important to get in to. And by the end of the film I’d earned my first belt and I’m now a third belt myself. Also, I snuck in to law lectures at London University for a couple of weeks, undetected. Again, I just wanted to put myself back in to that university setting - I try to put myself in something close to the character’s situation.”
Are there parallels between you and Sohail?
“On paper I guess you could say he was quite similar. But one of the main thrusts of Britz is to try and get past people ‘on paper’. If you inventorise them and list the things that they are, that isn’t really what defines them – whether that be Muslim, MI5 agent or even terrorist. They’re people ultimately, so I guess even for me I had to get past that and realize that Sohail is a completely different person. And he’s hugely different to me, his whole manner. As a person I think he’s quite a lot more reserved, quite a private guy. I think he has certain old English values of the ideal gentleman ingrained in him on some level. He’s also an inspiring character. It’s not that he’s British and therefore there’s no part of him that has roots in another culture. I think in embracing Britishness he realizes that he’s redefining what it means to be British – and I think that’s why the drama’s called Britz, or that’s how I interpret it anyway.”
Is it first and foremost a political piece?
“I think it almost transcends politics in a way – by the time you get to the end the quite haunting message it leaves is these are people, across the board. I think there’s a tendency in the current political climate to deal in abstracts and dehumanize people as this kind of ‘other’. Really I think the main service Britz does is to re-humanize young Muslims in the public eye, present them as people – which is what drama’s about.”
“Let’s just say that if lawyers - experts - find it alarming then the general public would be wise to follow their advice and find it alarming too.”
You’re a musician as well as an actor…
“I do music and I act, I went to Oxford and I did both there. Actually the week of the release of Britz was a very big week for me. Not least because of the release of Britz itself but because I played the Electric Proms which was really exciting, and I also released my single, People Like People that week – check it out, it’s on my MySpace page. It’s kind of terrifying the way it’s all lined up!”
Manjinder Virk as Nasima
Describe Nasima…
“She’s a young, Bradford-born, Muslim woman, just getting to know who she is, just starting at university where she’s training to be a doctor. She’s also very politically active and very savvy about Britain’s foreign policy. She’s emotionally quite vulnerable but she’s extremely passionate - she believes that you can change things.”
How did you get yourself in to her mindset?
“I did a lot of research and reading – not only on anti-terror laws, but also about what’s happened to the Muslim community and the alienation that’s felt. I’d already done quite a lot of research for my part in Bradford Riots so I had a sense before we started. It was strange because during the filming of Bradford Riots July 7 happened. When you’re doing a scene and you think, ‘Oh God, this is happening, in reality, somewhere else’ – that’s kind of unsettling. And so there was this strange connection – I’d already started thinking about the bigger picture, the Iraq war, what’s happened in Guantanamo Bay, so I was already aware of those issues facing the Muslim community. And then Britz came along - now I’m really aware.”
It’s quite heavy subject matter for someone who’s also done stand-up…
“I have done some comedy, yes. I'm a writer as well and I did a stand-up course because I was writing a sitcom – I wanted to see what it was like. I’d done a one-woman show and I thought, ‘What could be scarier than a one-woman show? – stand-up comedy!’ I did it for about a year - it’s a very different mindset trying to find the humor in everything. I realized that I’m not a stand-up but it provided great insights for my writing and it was nice to go into that world which was so far from what I was used to.”
What are you writing at the moment?
“I'm writing a film… and constantly missing my deadline so I really need to stop saying that. And I've written a couple of shorts. I trained in contemporary dance and performing arts. My jobs have been varied and I like the fact that I can go in to acting, writing, comedy, drama… physical theatre.”
Did you have any misgivings about signing up for a drama that may be controversial?
“For me, it’s good to be involved in a film that has something to say and is challenging perceptions. In that sense I think it’s better to be involved in work that is actually contributing to a debate in some way, as opposed to purporting the usual stereotypes and the usual arguments. I found the story sad for the characters, but it is important that the story raises questions and I hope focuses the debate. I think that art can still contribute in some way as it is necessary to ask the difficult questions.”
