General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Brick Lane (2007 film)

Brick Lane is a 2007 British drama film directed by Sarah Gavron, adapted from Monica Ali's 2003 debut novel of the same name. It follows Nazneen, a young Bangladeshi woman sent to 1980s London for an arranged marriage, whose confined life in East London changes when she takes sewing work and begins an affair with a younger man, Karim.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director	Sarah Gavron, in her feature debut²
Source	Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane (2003), shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize²
Screenplay	Abi Morgan and Laura Jones²
Principal cast	Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Harvey Virdi³
Running time	101 minutes, shot on 35mm³
Production	Ruby Films; producers Alison Owen and Chris Collins; presented by Film4, Ingenious, and the UK Film Council²
UK release	16 November 2007⁴
US release	Limited, 20 June 2008; grossed $1.1 million in the United States⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is a teenager in Bangladesh in the 1980s when she is sent to an East London estate to marry Chanu (Satish Kaushik), a middle-aged man she has never met.¹^•⁶ Trapped in her flat and in a loveless marriage, she fears her soul is quietly dying, while her sister Hasina, who stayed in Bangladesh, lives a carefree life of one adventure after another.¹

The story jumps to 2001. Nazneen is a mother of two daughters, Shahana (Naeema Begum) and Bibi (Lana Rahman), and her narrow world expands when she takes a job stitching clothes for the rag trade.⁶ She begins an affair with Karim (Christopher Simpson), the young market trader for whom she sews.⁵ The crunch comes after the September 11 attacks, amid the drumbeat for war and a backlash against Britain's Muslims; Karim is radicalized and initiates a self-defense league for the Bangladeshi community based on Muslim brotherhood.⁶^•⁷ Nazneen later rejects Karim when he embraces what one reviewer called a crude Islamic fundamentalism, while Chanu briefly comes into his own standing up against the cultural isolationism of the Islamists and then liberates Nazneen by deciding to return to Bangladesh.⁸

Production and adaptation

The film was a Ruby Films production backed by Film4, Ingenious, and the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund, with cinematography by Robbie Ryan.²^•⁴ Gavron worked on the film for three years, and part of the challenge, she said, was paring back Ali's multi-layered novel.⁹ Screen Daily's reviewer described the result as a compression of the novel into a less complex but still touching, small-scale tale of female empowerment.¹⁰

For the role of Chanu, screen tests were conducted in Bangladesh, the United States, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, and India before the Indian actor and director Satish Kaushik was cast.¹¹

Controversy

Ali's novel had already drawn objections when it was published in 2003: community leaders from the Greater Sylhet Development and Welfare Council called it a "despicable insult", and the Brick Lane Business Association said the book was insulting to the predominantly Bangladeshi community of the area.¹² When Ruby Films sought to shoot the adaptation on Brick Lane itself, objections flared again. Angered by what they regarded as an unflattering depiction of Bangladeshi Muslims, especially those from the Sylhet area, some local residents established the Campaign Against Monica Ali's Brick Lane.⁷ Acting on police advice, the film's backers moved outdoor shooting to another area, although the production did return to the street later on.¹³

The dispute followed the film to its premiere plans. Traders mounted a successful campaign to force the production to find an alternative location, and the 2007 Royal Film Performance at which the film was due to premiere was canceled, with media reports citing fears that the gala could become a target of the same group.¹⁴ Prince Charles pulled out of a planned royal screening.¹⁵ The film instead premiered at the London Film Festival on 26 October 2007.¹⁴

The scale of the opposition was contested. The film's makers said the protests were unjustified and exaggerated by the media, and Kaushik said only a small number of people were involved, some of whom had not even read the novel.¹³^•¹¹ The Independent noted that the outcry on the street itself was muted, with residents hoping the publicity would attract customers to their restaurants.¹⁵ The film's first screening at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival drew no protesters.¹⁶

Reception

Sony Pictures Classics acquired North and South American rights in August 2007 and released the film in the United States in limited release on 20 June 2008, where it grossed $1.1 million.²^•⁵

Critical response was generally favorable but qualified. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 68% Tomatometer from 97 reviews, with a critics' consensus calling it frustratingly slow-moving but saved by Chatterjee's acting and Gavron's gentle patience; its audience score is 60%.⁵ Metacritic recorded a metascore of 61, with 16 of 25 counted reviews positive and none negative.¹⁷ Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that it tells a story we think we already know but has new things to say within an old formula, scoring it 88.¹⁷ Variety judged the film a far lesser thing than the novel, while Time Out gave it three of five stars, finding it graceful but oddly flat-footed, and praising Chatterjee as watchful and expressive and Kaushik as stealing the show.¹⁷^•⁶ Philip French in The Guardian called it a small, touching picture that rings true but is socially on the thin side, suggesting the novel would have been better served by television.⁸

Both Gavron and Chatterjee said they were approached by women far beyond the Bangladeshi community in London who told them the film told the story of their lives.⁹

Awards

The film won three awards and received four nominations. At the 2007 Dinard British Film Festival it won Best Screenplay for Abi Morgan and the Silver Hitchcock for Sarah Gavron, and it won the C.I.C.A.E. Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.¹⁸^•⁴ Gavron was nominated for the BAFTA Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer in 2008, and both she and Chatterjee received British Independent Film Award nominations in 2007 for Best Director and Best Actress.¹⁸ Jocelyn Pook's score was nominated for an Evening Standard British Film Award.¹⁸

Gavron, Morgan, and producers Faye Ward and Alison Owen later reunited on Suffragette (2015).¹⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026