We Are Monster

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 01 May 2015
Film title: We Are Monster
Director: Antony Petrou
Starring: Leeshon Alexander, Aymen Hamdouchi, Gethin Anthony
Release date: 1 May
Certificate: 15

In 2000, 19-year-old British-Asian Zahid Mubarek was murdered by Robert Stewart, his cellmate at Feltham Young Offenders' Institution. He was five hours away from the end of his 90 day sentence. Stewart, a known racist, was placed in Mubarek’s cell because of overcrowding.

This true-life tragedy forms the basis of We Are Monster, but what’s interesting is that director Anthony Petrou and writer Leeshon Alexander choose to eschew naturalism, preferring instead a chilly, heightened reality. This distancing effect is welcome, given that for the majority of the film we’re trapped within Stewart’s poisonous psyche. Alexander has imagined a split personality: the real Stewart, a lost, impressionable young man; and his twisted alter ego, a combustible, white supremacist. The majority of scenes play out – Raising Cain-style – with the dominant voice berating the weaker one. Both sides of Stewart are played by Alexander – the duel performance is full-blooded. It's also brave and compassionate. It may lack nuance, but presenting the film from Stewart's point of view makes the title explicit. Monsters aren’t born, they’re conditioned.

We Are Monsters has its world premier at Edinburgh International Film Festival

http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/films/2014/we-are-monster