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ae fond kiss
ae fond kiss interview
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Ken Loach goes soft.

When twentysomething Glaswegian, Atta Yaqub, met Ken Loach he had no idea who he was. “I had seen My Name Is Joe,” he remembers. “But I didn’t know who directed it. It helped I think. I was just myself.” Ken Loach, on the other hand, knew exactly who was standing before him – the lead in his next movie, the Glasgow-set love story, Ae Fond Kiss. “Atta just walked through the door and we breathed a huge sigh of relief,” says the director. “He fitted the part perfectly.”



Ae Fond Kiss is a change of key for social realist director Loach, long-time bard of human misery. It’s set in Glasgow, his current location of choice after MNIJ and Sweet Sixteen, but without a concrete council housing block in sight. Instead, the action takes place in a series of bourgeois suburbs. As Casim, a young Muslim guy with a western lifestyle and traditional background, Atta is another unusual element in a Ken Loach film: the heart-throb. “At the Galway film festival I think he acquired quite a collection of girls

The drama revolves around the tensions between Casim’s two lives. He has an arranged marriage on the cards, a prospect that pales to grey when a chance encounter with an earthy Catholic girl slowly builds into a lasting bond. “There are many similarities between Casim and myself,” confirms Atta who had never acted before. “He leads a double life but has a good family bond. If I’d never done the film it would have been ‘go to uni, get a job’ and that’s it. My mum loves the fact that I’ve just got a degree and I’m not even using it at the moment. When they came over from Pakistan they didn’t have all this. They think being here is a massive opportunity.”



Loach and his writer, Paul Laverty, became interested in the cultural conflicts facing British Muslims when there was a noticeable downward turn following the events of 9/11. But, rather than directly tackle the newly racist climate, they chose a more general story that would stand the test of time. Ae Fond Kiss is a realistic Romeo & Juliet executed with a tender lightness of touch, unusual in the director’s hard-hitting career that now spans four decades and nearly 60 film and TV projects. Though not even those he auditions often know his name. “It’s a general experience,” he smiles, through customary self-deprecation.

Atta, on the other hand, is rightly loving the new attention. “When I got the phone call saying I was the lead,” he says, “honestly, I was in tears. I was so grateful to god and Ken and everyone.” Spoken like a true star.


Skye Sherwin 17 September 04
Ae Fond Kiss, on selected release 17 September 04.
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