Window On Their World

Nothing about the film was conventional. No location scouts, no 120-page script, no comfy trailers — not even any actors. Instead, the eight-person crew flew into Peshawar, in Pakistan near the Afghan border, carrying only a digital camera, sound equipment (no lights) and a 25-page outline. Their plan was to find non-actors to stand in front of the camera: travel agents, café owners, soldiers and villagers. Choosing amateurs instead of professional actors reduced costs and upped the realism; and it also echoed a new trend of films starring non-actors, including Brazil's City of God and Mexico's Japón (Japan). But it wasn't easy. After a tour of English language schools in Peshawar and six hours of taped interviews, call-backs finally went out to 50 boys for the two lead roles.

An army of casting agents couldn't have found a better pair. Enayatullah, discovered working at his family's hi-fi store, is the tall, wide-eyed and gentle Enayat. Jamal Udin Torabi, who speaks some English and keeps his own name in the film, plays his younger cousin, the street-smart joker. Both raised in Shamshatoo refugee camp, the film's starting point, they became their characters in a real sense: young undocumented aliens heading down a long, frightening road. "The experience of traveling outside Pakistan was a new and strange one for them," explains Grisoni. "And often at border controls, the officials were intimidating. So, there were plenty of times when the boys were uncomfortable. But we were always with them, always negotiating."

As refugees, the boys had no papers. Getting them Afghan passports meant crossing the border into Kabul, its remains still smoking after America's attack. And then they needed visas. Lots of visas. "When you live in a country like Britain, you have the idea that visas are to help you travel from one place to another," says Winterbottom. "But they're not, they're to stop you. As soon as you get to a border with two Afghan refugees, you have a problem." Most embassies agreed to grant visas if the boys could get entry into Britain first. But Britain wasn't cooperating. In This World had become as much documentary as fiction.

Producers Anita Overland and Andrew Eaton made frantic calls asking every influential Brit they knew to write to the embassy. "This was an incredible lesson in international diplomacy," says Eaton. "If you don't exist as a citizen of the world, it's amazing how restricted you are in what you can and cannot do."

The begging letters worked and the visas finally came through. But then reality got in the way once more. Shooting in Pakistan was delayed by two weeks after journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped. The production again stalled when Turkey refused permission to film in a Kurdish area. Determined to get the picture made, the crew filtered into the country in pairs, posing as camera-happy tourists.

Moving through the region between January and March of last year, the crew couldn't help feeling vulnerable. "We were in the heartland of anti-Americanism and everyone we met thought Sept. 11 was an American or Jewish conspiracy or both," Winterbottom says. "Nevertheless, on a day-to-day level, people treated us in a friendly way with no obvious hostility." Working through a translator (the dialogue is in Pashtu), Winterbottom just laid out what would happen next and then let the camera roll. Onscreen, the boys are so natural and unaware that watching them seems more intrusion than entertainment.

Having made his share of crowd-pleasers — 24 Hour Party People caught the rush of the 1980s Manchester rave scene — Winterbottom knows that this quiet, serious film won't be a big box-office draw. And he concedes that "it's not going to change the world, it's not going to make everyone in Europe suddenly welcome immigrants." But in a final twist of life imitating art imitating life, Jamal made it back to London after the filming ended and remains in the city on exceptional leave, free to stay until his 18th birthday. Maybe movies can change the world, after all.