Window On Their World

London, August 2001. British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom and screenwriter Tony Grisoni discuss their next project, a film that will follow two Afghan refugees as they smuggle themselves overland — squeezed between boxes of oranges, locked in an airtight freight container — from Peshawar to London. The journey will take the asylum seekers through western Pakistan to Iran, then on to Turkey, Italy, France and finally into Britain. With European hostility toward immigrants on the rise, Winterbottom wants to tell the other side of the story — he wants to do a film that's sympathetic, but not sentimental, and very human.

New York, one month later. two passenger planes tear through the Twin Towers. President George W. Bush declares war on terrorism and vows to take the fight to the al-Qaeda camps of Afghanistan. Grisoni calls Winterbottom and asks nervously, "What now?" "Now," says the director, "I want to do the film even more."

The result of Winterbottom's determination — In This World, which opens in London March 28 — shows the desperation and danger that an estimated 1 million asylum seekers endure each year. The film is thoughtful, tragic and unrelenting — it's part road movie, part appeal for reform. From the start, says Winterbottom, the 41-year-old director of The Claim and 24 Hour Party People, he envisioned it as "an incredibly simple film. It has a very obvious story to tell — there are people trying to get here; will they or not? At the same time, the journeys are epic, with all the countries they pass through and everything these people have to do to get here."

If someone's willing to risk their life to get here, surely once they do, we should help them.

Simple appealed to Grisoni. When the screenwriter met Winterbottom, he was still recovering from his involvement with the disastrous The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which — thanks to a freak rainstorm and a lead actor with a herniated disk — collapsed on the sixth day of shooting. But his attraction was also more personal. "I recognized the fact that immigrants are the lifeblood of the country," he says. "Most of us don't have to go back very far in our family history to find an immigrant. In my case, it was my dad, so I've got a natural interest."

Research started at home, with Winterbottom and Grisoni leafing through countless articles and listening to asylum seekers recount details of their arduous journeys. "There's this idea that, unless they've been bombed in their homes, they're false refugees," says Winterbottom, whose characters go to London looking for work, not protection. "But even if they're economic migrants, if someone's willing to risk their life and make that journey to get here, surely once they do, we should want to help them." At one point, Grisoni donned a hooded jacket and snuck into Sangatte for a few days, mixing with hopeful asylum applicants and creating characters in his head. "I met a Macedonian guy who called himself The Commander," Grisoni recalls. "I put him together with another guy who had a great story [about working in a London pizzeria] and that became a character at the end of the film."