Project Detail

Anita and Me

Synopsis

Meena is twelve years old and lives in the village of Tollington 'the jewel of the Black Country' - in 1972. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. Her idyllic adolescence, surrounded by eccentric relatives and friends, is disrupted by the arrival in Tollington of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family. At 14 - blonde, aloof, beautiful, outrageous and sassy - Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita's life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn her salad days sour. ANITE AND ME paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath.

Details

Year: 2002
Type of film: Features
Format: 35mm Kodak
Director: Metin Huseyin
Producer: Meera Syal
Editor: Annie Kocur
Screenwriter: Meera Syal, from her novel
Director of Photography: Cinders Forshaw
Sound: Martin Trevis
Music: Muso Music Limited
Principal cast: Chandeep Uppal, Anna Brewster, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ayesha Dharker, Lynn Redgrave, Mark Williams, Max Beesley, Alex Freeborn, Kathy Burke, Meera Syal, Georgia Patrick, Omid Ojalili, Alina Iqbal, Rajinder Kaur

Genre

Literary Adaption Asian Comedy Drama

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

Starfield Productions

50 Chiswick High Street
London
W4 1SZ

+44 (0)20 8995 8060

Sales Company

Portman Film and Televison Ltd

21-25 St Anne's Court
London
W1V 3AW

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It was in part thanks to the success of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels that It Was An Accident got off the shelf and into production. Screenwriter Ol Parker first got hold of the novel by Walthamstow-based former probation officer Jeremy Cameron in 1996, adapted it and teamed up with producer Paul Goodman. But film executives didn't get the stylised vocabulary and frenetic pacing - it was way too ahead of its time. But in the post-Lock, Stock world, Parker's script, now with director Metin Huseyin on board, found an enthusiastic backer in Lottery franchise studio Pathe Pictures. Goodman is quick to point out the differences between his film and Guy Ritchie's. "They share similar language but this has heart and soul," he says. The film stars two of Britain's most promising young actors: Chiwetel Ejiofor (most recently wowing theatre audiences in Blue Orange at the National Theatre) and Max Beesley (reunited with Metin Huseyin after the BBC serial Tom Jones). It was the richness of the language in Cameron's novel that appealed to Parker and Goodman. That Parker and Huseyin had both lived in Walthamstow gave them an insight into the area's particular brand of East End culture and helped turn what could have been just another London gangster flick into a film that, as Huseyin says, is "very funny about violence, but underpinned by a serious story about a guy you want to succeed trying to go straight". The film is looking for spots on the international festival circuit. "We'd like to see it at Toronto because it's a multi-cultural town that we know will respond to the film and that will help with a US sale," says Goodman.

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