Brick Lane to receive UK premiere at London Film Festival
Story by Jack Foley
SARAH Gavron’s controversial Brick Lane is to receive its UK premiere at the 51st London Film Festival, it has been confirmed.
The film will receive a Film on the Square screening on Friday, October 26, at 8:30pm (BST) in what is certain to be a keenly observed gala occasion.
Brick Lane has continued to attract heated debate ever since it was first published in 2003 and swiftly shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
It tells the story of a Bangladeshi woman sent to London for an arranged marriage but courted anger from protestors who claim it portrays residents of London’s Brick Lane as uneducated.
The film was originally to have received its UK premiere at the royal charity gala on October 29 in the presence of The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.
But they have pulled out of the screening because, according to a royal spokesman, it had been impossible to find a date for the Prince to attend a screening. The spokesman added, however, that the controversy had been taken into account.
The decision marks the first time the annual gala has been scrapped since 1958 – and it is now hoped that to compensate for the absence of a Royal Film this year, two performances will be held in 2008.
Nevertheless, the royals loss is the London Film Festival’s gain and Sarah Gavron said she was delighted to be a part of a London Film Festival line-up that already includes David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, Brad Pitt’s The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Owen Wilson’s The Darjeeling Limited and the world premiere of Robert Redford’s Lions For Lambs, co-starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise.
She commented: “It [Brick Lane] is a film made and set in London, that embraces everything London is today – there isn’t a more appropriate place for it to premiere.”