Love & Hate Watch the trailer for Dominic Savage's drama.

After three award-winning TV dramas - Nice Girls (2000), When I Was 12 (2001) and Out Of Control (2002) - Dominic Savage makes his cinematic debut with Love & Hate. Filmed in Blackburn, the movie stars newcomer Samina Awan as a British Muslim falling for a fellow worker (Tom Hudson). He's battling more than just teenage hormones, though, and the couple's love story plays out against a backdrop of racism, cultural misunderstandings, and Snow Patrol.

The movie was shot in Savage's trademark improvisational style and, like his previous work for TV, is another look at teenage lives. "I don't think I've deliberately set out to make films about youth," Dominic states whilst taking a break from prepping his next movie. "The next film [an update of Ken Loach's seminal 60s work Cathy Come Home, starring Colin Firth and Anne-Marie Duff] features young people, but it's also about middle-aged people and old people, and I don't feel any more daunted by that. In the end, it's about making stories that are at the heart of what matters in a social context."

It's about making stories that are at the heart of what matters in a social context.

Although he started his filmmaking career in documentaries, Dominic's first foray into film was as an actor, in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 historical drama Barry Lyndon. Despite the seeming polarity between improv and multiple takes, Dominic sees some commonality between the methods. "As different as my approach is from Kubrick's, there's also a strange similarity in that he changed everything all of the time. I remember that all the scenes I did on Barry Lyndon were always different from what was in the original script. He was always pushing and trying new things."

In the video Dominic discusses his approach to filmmaking, and why low budget filmmaking still appeals to him.

Love & Hate is released in UK cinemas on Friday 5th May 2006. The updated version of Cathy Come Home will be screened on BBC TV in November.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 04 May 06

send to a friend 

start a new discussion