Gavron’s film tells the story of a beautiful Bangladeshi housewife – Nazneen – who has an affair with a younger man whilst also grappling with the idea that grey, old London (her adopted home) might actually be where she truly belongs. The director’s style hovers between being street-savvy and rhapsodic. She cites the discovery of art house cinema at Hampstead’s Everyman as a big influence on the direction of her career. This is where she first saw the work of filmmakers like Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears and Terence Davies ‘who were telling stories about the world around us’. The film’s whimsical flashbacks to a childhood in a lush looking Bangladesh and lovemaking scenes of the utmost delicacy are interspersed with a wider dialogue that looks at tensions in London’s Muslim communities, exacerbated by the events of 9/11. Though touching on difficult issue like the radicalisation of young Muslims it’s the more personal aspects of the film that really interests Gavron.

‘The love story became central to the film. But above all, it was the journey of Nazneen, a woman finding her voice and place in the world, that we wanted to put on the screen’.

It seems faintly ridiculous that a film made by someone who seems hyper-sensitive to cultural issues should have caused such a furore. Gavron is careful to point out she worked closely with Ruhul Amin, a Bangladeshi filmmaker based in the Brick Lane area and reckons that she ‘couldn’t have made this film without the input of the East London Bangladeshi Community’. She is the first to admit she is a ‘complete outsider’ to that community but her affection for multicultural London, beginning from an early age in Highgate, seems to resonate within the film.

‘Through my childhood and teenage years I spent a lot of time at Jacksons Lane Community Centre (in Highgate) which was very multicultural. I remember watching Asian dance troupes and mixing at the after school club with children from many cultures. I met families that had recently arrived in the country and was struck by their stories of other lives and how they viewed London through different eyes. My grandmother was an immigrant and I made the connection with her stories”.

She seems acutely aware that her first feature film ‘won’t please everyone’. She maintains that she ‘can’t be a spokesperson for the community’ and that the ‘film is not a representation of that community, but one fictional story’. And, after so much controversy, who can blame her for wanting to distant herself from the burden of that responsibility. However it is undeniable that Brick Lane has lifted the lid on this subculture. Not in the gritty, violent and gang-ridden way that some directors employ to represent immigrant communities (the shocking Russian stereotypes in David Cronenberg’s latest offering, Eastern Promises, springs to mind). But in a gentle and humorous way, that sees an immigrant community quietly chugging along with things, the nuances of their day-to-day lives making up the sum of their existence, with the occasional dramatic love affair or political awakening thrown into the mix.

‘We wanted to open up the lives of one fictional Bangladeshi family in East London’ explains Gavron ‘and show their struggles, their conflicts, their fears and hopes and their loves, set against the political and social landscape of the early years of the 21st century. I hope people go to see for themselves’.