In the age of post-Brexit Britain, heightened racism, aggression towards immigrants and gentrification taking over cities, it’s no wonder that feelings of discontent continue to soar across the board – the system is broken. A state of affairs that filmmaker Beru Tessema channelled into drama short Lions, his thought provoking portrait focussed on two very different sides of this story. A young immigrant family whose application for asylum is rejected and are forced into subpar living conditions unintentionally come into conflict with a pair of disgruntled British men who have been forced out of their homes and see taking advantage of those who equally have nothing themselves as their only route to survival. Placing us in the heart of a conflicted area, an inner London estate where the brutalist architecture and deprived streets and stairways play their own role, Lions is at heart a story about understanding and acceptance which encourages us to consider who the real villain is. It is a truly timely, British story and with Lions nominated for Best British Short at the upcoming BIFA awards, we spoke to Tessema about working with a variety of languages within the film, giving his actors room to respond to scenes through improvisation and combining multiple narratives to reflect not just the modern immigrant experience but also provide a non-judgemental perspective of lives lived on the edge of economic existence in modern day Britain.
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
Lions covers a multitude of issues facing British society right now. What inspired you to tell this particular story?
I was initially thinking about my own experiences of coming to London when I was a kid and the barriers around language and reflecting on the expectations that one has of what London could be like compared to the reality of it. I was also considering the expectations and reality of the migrant experience in this post-Brexit period where so many people are feeling disenfranchised. Whether migrants, immigrants, or white working class people, it’s across the board and I was really inspired to try to tell a story that explores the human aspect of this experience.
Languages and the resulting issues of miscommunication are a key aspect of the conflict in the film, can you tell us about deploying that as a narrative device here?
I wanted to cast a Congolese family to challenge the racist slur or trope that they have to learn English. We are focusing on a young bilingual protagonist who speaks French and Lingala and she’s learning English. I wanted to hone in on the reality of so many bilingual immigrants who are treated badly for not speaking English. Both Melodie Wakivuamina, who plays Rosie and Winnie Imara, who plays Grace, are Congolese and they really helped with the dialect and taught Kurt Egyiawan, who plays Moses, and is from Cameroon to learn his lines.
So much of their performances and the way we worked with language was found in rehearsals. Whilst language was an obstacle and it was the basis of the conflict, in the prep work and our workshopping so much of the improvisation work was really about responding to behaviour and working in a way that was instinctive. This in turn made it feel realistic that people could overlap in dialogue, what they were responding to was what the other person was doing, rather than always what the other person was saying.
You can see that reaction to behaviour so clearly when the guys come in to clean the windows.
I was so impressed with Morgan Watkins, who plays Liam because that moment was improvised. That scene was so alive, safety was of course paramount, but we really wanted to find a sense of danger within that scene so we were very free with the way we were shooting and I wanted to give the actors space to pursue the thing that they wanted. Lee feels most aggrieved by how disenfranchised he was in that space that he feels should be his, and in pursuing that, he found these amazing lines that expressed his rage and vulnerability. I love working collaboratively with actors because the offerings that come about are moments of just truth.
We really wanted to find a sense of danger within that scene so we were very free with the way we were shooting.
Another powerful moment in that scene was the way Liam describes the estate, he once knew the people that lived there and now it’s full of immigrants. The way he says that is so revealing in trying to understand where a character like that is coming from. I worked really closely with all the actors. With Morgan, we spent time really thinking about the biography of his character and building who he is, where he comes from. We grew up in the same area in North West London and we walked around those spaces and looked at the way in which they had changed. As we were doing that we were also thinking about a character like Liam and how he would relate to spaces that he’s familiar with and how they would have changed. I could really trust the actors to be free because the material that they had prepared was so rich and in depth.
Those flats serve as their own character, how did you find the location?
I love council estates. I think there’s such beauty in so many of them. Council estates were initially built to create communal spaces and very inclusive ways of living which obviously didn’t turn out the way it was planned. People too easily associate estates with poverty and suffering but I was interested in showing the other side of that. The joy and the beauty and the ways in which people can thrive in those spaces which I grew up in and was very happy in. It was quite a process scouting different estates and then suddenly finding Samuda Estate.
In one frame you can see the gleaming buildings of the financial districts and the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty which says so much about our society.
The most amazing part of this estate was the backdrop. In one frame you can see the gleaming buildings of the financial districts and the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty which says so much about our society. I also loved the windows in these buildings which play such an important part of the narrative in the film. The flat just had so much space that we could work with to explore this idea of window cleaners and the balcony gave us real possibilities of working on both sides of the glass. It’s a very obvious thing to say but buildings and spaces are essential characters in films and the way other characters interact with them reveals so much.
I particularly love the way you flip so many preconceptions on their head within the film.
I love working with multiple narratives which I think is so important when thinking about the immigrant experience. Mrs. Bello, who Grace works for, lives in that amazing, sculptural house. They’re a wealthy immigrant West African family whose experience is so profoundly different to that of Grace and Rosie. I want to engage with narratives that are truthful. What does it feel like for people to know this city as their home, to feel like natives of this city and yet to have no home? That’s a reality for some and I feel it’s important to humanise characters that might be perceived as villains. Characters like the window cleaners, who are ultimately engaged in the very difficult business of surviving in a very hostile environment. When people don’t have an economic safety net, they become exiles in their own countries.
I wanted to focus on what we have in common, what unites us and then separates us. But, you know, the point I really want to make is how there’s so much we have in common. The family is in a very precarious situation. They’re being exploited by an abusive landlord, their asylum claim has been rejected and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to survive. The window cleaners are also in a very similar situation. We’re in the same boat and that final moment with the dinner is a small gesture, but that small gesture is about recognising our common, shared humanity. The villain or the antagonist is the hostile environment, the system that actually seeks to divide groups. We need to pay attention to the political environment and the economic realities that create these situations.
A lot of Lions is shot either at night or within dark and heavy environments which offer an atmosphere of pervading threat.
We shot in early February and we tried to use as much available, natural light as possible. There was just something about the lighting on those estates which is so atmospheric. There’s an orangey hue to those spaces. Our DP, Noé Bach was able to create something that had a lot of depth in the image with minimal, natural lighting. I was initially quite worried about shooting at a time when the daylight was going to be so limited, but it worked. It provided us with a grey, bluish hue which really added to the story and the atmosphere.
Once actors feel a sense of authority and ownership over the character, they make that character human and three-dimensional.
Our focus was the bodies in the space and how those bodies are lit, how they occupy the space and everything being motivated by movement. In our prep for the shoot we were talking about it being led by the actors and when we trusted that, it really created these images that were focused on truthful expressions.
How long was the whole production process?
The script took a while including the process of getting funding but once we had the scripts and workshopped it with all the actors, which was a huge part of the casting process, the shoot was only four days. I’m very reluctant to rehearse scenes because you lose the discovery, the freshness and the surprise. Instead, we workshopped the scenes so the actors knew them but it was more about improvising around the scenes that really helped us so by the time we got to the shoot it was super tight. Once actors feel a sense of authority and ownership over the character, they make that character human and three-dimensional. Learning words on a page and being told where to stand and how to move is one way of doing it but I want to spend time workshopping who the person is, what the scene entails and then it becomes a collaboration which is really exciting.
Lions has been nominated for Best British Short at the BIFA awards, what does that mean to you?
It means so much, it’s been an incredible process. The process of actually making the film has just been such a joyous experience, you know, and collaborating with incredible people is just such a joyous experience. It’s such a privilege to be nominated and I feel really inspired, I just want to get back on set and make another film.
Speaking of which, what’s up next for you?
I’m working on some scripts at the moment. Early stages, I feel really inspired to make something that’s long form because that’s the next challenge.
