Don’t Be So Political is a monthly film series that engages with films through a political lens. Each screening is preceded by an expert Q&A. Hosted by Zach Wortzman
“We are the people you do not see.”
This event is being co-sponsored by the Global Labour Research Centre in the lead up to the People’s Tribunal on the Violation of Migrant Rights in Toronto on December 18-20.
Working at a hotel as undocumented immigrant in London, Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds a human heart in a toilet he’s cleaning. He and a hotel maid, Senay (Audrey Tautou) have to stay one step ahead of immigration police and escape the fallout of his gruesome find.
Okwe (Ejiofor), a doctor from Nigeria, now works as a cab driver by day and hotel concierge by night. He rarely sleeps and when he does, it’s on the couch of a hotel maid, Senay (Tautou), whom he rents it from during her work hours. After Okwe discovers a human heart in the hotel and Senay is tracked down by immigration police, their very existence in London becomes imperilled. A scalpel sharp script from Steven Knight has Okwe and Senay dashing through London’s neglected arteries and forced into the desperate reactions of ‘non-official persons’. Existing in a system that rejects that existence, where their identity becomes a liability, the duo are threatened by the same dangers they had fled their home countries for in hopes of finding safety and dignity in London. Their humanity for sale, they plan to rescue themselves from the system.
Sweeping the British Independent Film Awards in 2003 with wins in Best Film, best Actor (Ejiofor), Best Director (Frears), and Best Screenplay (Knight), Dirty Pretty Things is an unflinching look at the people that are deemed too difficult to look at. The film affirms the dignity of the marginalized and illuminates the inhumanity of a system that perpetuates harm.