LIES WE TELL
 
Lies We Tell, on the other hand, is pure fiction, a dramatic “story” from contemporary life.
 
Fiction, however, located firmly at the crossroads of cultures in cities such as Leeds, where it is dangerous to get caught standing in the middle.
 
A brilliant young lawyer, Sybilla Deen, crosses that intersection routinely – travelling between a traditional home-life, a multigenerational family of Pakistani origin, where arranged marriages are customary, and the Western professional world, with its contemporary undercurrent of colonialism.
 
Exposure of her modern Western lifestyle threatens to ostracize her from her community and even endangers her life, and the lives of her vulnerable younger brother and sister.

Similarly caught is Gabriel Byrne, in a wonderfully subtle playing of Donald, the dogged and hyper-loyal driver to fat cat Harvey Keitel; left to “tidy up” after his boss’s unexplained death, which includes his mistress, the conflicted Ms Deen.
 
Donald, a salt-of-the-earth-Yorkshireman, is drawn reluctantly out of his shell, and way out of his depth to protect her, from criminals and predators on both sides of the cultural divide, and from her own unhappy past.
 
He is drawn not only into a culture he doesn’t understand, but a dark criminal world whose casual cruelty is even more baffling.
 
A passive individual, crushed and subservient, he steps up when his affections and outrage at injustice are pricked, and takes some action.
 
Raindance commentator Derek Ravenscroft noted that it follows “in the tradition of British thrillers such as Mona Lisa with it’s odd-couple pairing in a world of corruption and sleaze”.
 
But, he added, “the setting with its underbelly of arranged marriages, sexual exploitation and British Pakistani gangster culture gives it a unique, contemporary focus”. 

Cast and crew from both films will be in attendance at the festival.
 
Tickets for these and other festival films are on sale now at www.bbff.com.au