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This deceptively simple short film depicts the life of a ten-year-old Iranian
girl as she seeks asylum in Britain with her mother, Yasaman, as well as her
grandmother and baby brother.
The film begins bravely in near pitch black, with the family's covert
nighttime journey in the back of a lorry, catching only fleeting glimpses of the
passing landscape through slats in the lorry's sides before a blinding light -
as a customs officer opens the rear doors - heralds their arrival. In Edinburgh,
Leila and her family are taken in by her mother's sister, Maryam, who is living
in a small tenement flat.
From here on, the film charts Leila's struggle to adapt to her new
environment. Sent to enrol at the local school with her cousin, Sara, Leila -
who appears to understand English, but remains altogether silent throughout - is
shunned by Sara's white friends and mocked by two boys when the school nurse
discovers she has nits. Meanwhile, Yasaman has little time for her daughter as
she forlornly attempts to find a lawyer to help them in their application for
asylum, while suffering her sister's impatience for them to leave. Hurt and
frustrated after her mother shouts at her, Leila goes outside and adopts a
popular local means of expressing her identity - by writing her name (in Farsi)
on a graffiti-covered wall.
The film contrasts the outsider status of Leila and her mother with Sara's
and Maryam's estrangement from their native culture. "You've become so British,"
complains Yasaman, shocked at her sister's abandonment of the Iranian traditions
of hospitality and family support. When Sara and her friends stumble on Leila's
act of vandalism, meanwhile, Sara is unable to explain why her cousin writes
backwards, and says nothing when one of the friends offers her own explanation -
"because she's a Paki". In the end, it is a universal gesture that bridges the
cultural gap between Leila and Sara's gang - she offers them sweets.
Leila was shot on digital video with a budget of under £10,000, in line with
the brief of the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund. Director Ian Dodds, a
graduate of the Royal College of Art, was already an experienced director of
photography when the film was made. Writer Roxana Pope, a British-Iranian
based in Edinburgh, later directed documentaries, including Tehran Backyard
(2008), which followed the life of a 60-year-old cleaner in Iran's capital
city.
Gemma Starkey
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Complete film (10:11)
