The prolific director of "The Claim" and "24 Hour Party People", Michael Winterbottom teams up with "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" screenwriter Tony Grisoni for docu-style refugee drama "In This World".
The pair blab about bombing, ToraBora and making movies on the cheap.
What sort of research did you undertake for "In This World"?
TG: It was all research. There was never going to be a straight screenplay. The research started with reading people's accounts, in newspapers and magazines, then meeting people in London who had done that kind of journey, and hearing their experiences.
And then going to Sangatte - the refugee camp that doesn't exist any more, near Calais - and meeting people there, and collecting stories and events.
All that stuff was building up into a route that went from Peshawar in Pakistan, near the Afghan border, over the boarder into Iran, over the border into Turkey, and then from Istanbul into Europe. That became the route, which anchors the film.
The next thing up was for me and Michael to go out to Peshawar and test-run the route.
MW: We were out there for three and a half weeks. It was kind of like a lifetime, in a way. We went to Peshawar and had a week going round all the refugee camps, to imagine, "If we came here to make a film, would it be possible?" We had a great time. It was an amazing journey and we met a lot of interesting people.
TG: We were lucky. When we were out there, we [the American and British forces] were bombing the ToraBora Mountains, down the road. And when we went up there to shoot, Daniel Pearl [the Wall Street Journal journalist] had been captured - we didn't know he'd been killed. Against that background, we didn't have any trouble at all. I mean, imagine: you go out to a place and just down the road there's a huge war going on, and people were only polite and helpful.
Was the journey in the film the real-life journey of the lead, Jamal?
MW: No, not at all. The idea was we wanted to find two people who spoke English, who we felt were strong enough to survive the journey - to enjoy the journey - but want to go back to Peshawar at the end of it all.
So we did the journey and a person from Revolution [Winterbottom's production company] took both Jamal and Enayatullah back, made sure they got home and met up with their families and made all the payments. Then about two months later Jamal called you, didn't he?
TG: He sent an email, because we were all in touch by email. It said: "I've something very serious to tell you, I'm in London."
MW: It's weird, because Enayatullah went back and he's now doing import/export to Peshawar. And Jamal is incredibly bright and sharp but quite complicated. As we came further into Europe on the filming, it felt like he was getting more and more homesick, and more and more rooted in this culture. So it was kind of weird when we realised that he'd come back to live here for as long as he could.
What we all feel about him, and ideally about the film, is it's not that it's necessarily a great thing to come to London, or that Europe is a better place to be than Pakistan. It's that anyone, whether they are economic migrants, or asylum seekers, or refugees, anyone who gives up their culture, their home, their family, their friends, to go halfway round the world to somewhere they've never been before, in order for the possibility of having a better life... No one does it unless they're desperate.
Do you think immigration warrants so much press coverage?
MW: The starting point for the film is that in Europe there's this incredible hostility to outsiders, and this is an incredibly rich continent.
Peshawar is one city in a very poor country and it has got one million refugees. You think, 'For God's sake how is it that we are so shocked and so "swamped" by the refugees we have here, when one city in Pakistan has for the last 25 years been supporting a refugee population that is as big as the local population?'
Michael, at a time when everyone else is saying how difficult it is to make movies in Britain, you keep banging them out. Why is that?
MW: Because they're cheap. I'm allowed to make them because they're cheap. And Tony Grisoni is very cheap.
TG: So cheap.
MW: Tony works with Terry Gilliam, who makes proper movies but they cost a lot of money, so he makes one every two years. And occasionally he works with me. I don't make proper movies but they don't cost a lot of money and I make two a year. It's a choice. Tony supports his hobby of working with me by going off and working with Terry Gilliam now and again.
TG: Michael's my hobby, my new hobby.
"In This World" is out now to buy on DVD.
