Kidulthood director Menhaj Huda returns to UK cinemas this week with Everywhere and Nowhere, another coming-of-age tale focusing on a British Asian teenager (James Floyd, pictured below) wrestling with how to lead his own life, while having to contend with what’s expected of him from his family and culture.
We had the chance to chat with Huda about the film (which he co-wrote) and how he related to the characters in the film when he was growing up.
How much does the film reflect your own upbringing?
The side which wasn’t a struggle for me was my decision to take a creative path in my career (in the film, lead character Ash wants to be a DJ, much to the disapproval of his father).
The double life thing was definitely something I encountered, and trying to keep my love for clubbing/raving separate from my family.
This is another rites of passage tale. What attracts you to the material?
You find some of those films handle that theme in a comedic fashion, where things gets resolved at the end when in fact, everything is not fine in real life when you’re a young person. It can be a real struggle and that’s what I wanted to be the challenge with Ash.
I also did a pilot episode for the BBC at couple of years back (West 10 LDN) which covered similar ground but sadly, didn’t get picked up for a full series. That was a shame as films like Adulthood and Shank have proved there’s an audience for this type of drama on the big screen, why not TV?
Do you think that generation divide is changing?
It’s still there. Two things here – what happened was that our parents came over from another culture and were very traditional-thinking and established themselves over here and their children have very much still held onto that culture, who still use it as a barometer. While this has been happening, society has developed in the East, but you get people over here still cocooned in that world of old values which they came, and that creates friction with the younger generation.
In the other end of the scale, while some parents have become much more liberal, it’s the younger crowd who have reverted back to traditional ways, and that certainly hasn’t been covered before.
How did you manage to the legendary Saeed Jaffrey (veteran of many UK and Bollywood features) onboard? Some of the material is pretty challenging.
We sent him the script and he said yes and committed to it very early on. We really wanted Art Malik too (he plays Ash’s uncle) and we kept wondering if he would be interested in this type of thing until we said “let’s just offer it to him!” When he said yes, I was thrilled as this was the kind of endorsement I felt we needed.
What’s next for you?
I’m starting a horror film called comedown. I’m a director for hire on that one, but it’s the kind of genre I’m really interesting in and exciting to be doing. It’s has a urban feel to it and is set in a tower block and we have the talented Martin Compston and Adam Deacon (Everywhere and Nowhere co-star) in the cast.
