Imran Perretta’s debut feature ISH - winner of the Audience Award at Venice Critics’ Week - has been acquired by BFI Distribution for a UK and Ireland theatrical release next year.
The film was also nominated for the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature at the BFI London Film Festival and earned Dhiraj Mahey the Breakthrough Producer prize at the British Independent Film Awards.
Congratulations to the entire ISH team! We can’t wait for audiences to experience this powerful story on the big screen.
#BackedbyBBCFilm #ISH @britishfilminstitute@imranperretta@dhiraj_mahey
My first post on instagram, so here goes…🫣
Tonight, my debut feature film, Ish, has its UK premiere at @londonfilmfestival and I couldn’t be prouder to share it with a home crowd!
Ish has been a crazy ride so far, taking us from a magical summer on set in Luton to our world premiere at @settimana_della_critica at Venice Film Festival a year later! I’m honoured to say that we won the Audience Award while we were there and got some stellar reviews along the way, all of which feels very special indeed.
Eternal thanks to the producers, financiers, cast and crew that helped make this film a reality. I never thought I’d get to do anything like this and it has been the privilege of a lifetime making Ish with you all.
So please come join us tonight to celebrate!
And as always, Free Palestine.
Director: @imranperretta
Screenwriters: @imranperretta@bendy.walsh
DoP: @jermainedwards
Ads: Ben Lanning, @go_for_erin , Amy Coop @amelia_sabeti
Producers: @dhiraj_mahey , @b_m_gz
Costume Designer: @neeshatulsichampaneria
Prod Designer: @elenaisolini
Hair and Makeup: @susanamota
Locations: @battlekataly
Editor: @adabis
Sound Design: @jens.r.petersen@ninahartstone
Composer: @imranperretta
Principal cast: Farhan Hasnat, Yahya Kitana, Avin Shah, Zubin Varla, Sudha Bhuchar @bhucharboulevard , @joycrookes , Arman Mohammed, Is’haaq Hasan Haque, Hasnain Shah
Random selection of BTS shots by me. Tri-X and digital.
TONIGHT: SUROOR - IMRAN PERRETTA / PAUL PURGAS / USHARA DILRUKSHAN / SUREN SENEVIRATNE + POULOMI DESAI + ADNAN NAQVI
Tonight’s Suroor brings together an evolving South Asian improvised performance group in a new live configuration: composer and filmmaker IMRAN PERRETTA, Emptyset’s PAUL PURGAS, cellist and sound artist USHARA DILRUKSHAN, and computer music archivist and performer SUREN SENEVIRATNE. Working across guitar, synthesis, drums and strings, the group move through ritual electronics, atmospheric texture, live digital processing and rhythmic states conceived through myth, transcendence and syncretism.
That already makes for a charged centre of gravity, but the expanded bill pushes this further. POULOMI DESAI performs an improvised concert on modified sitar, sending the instrument through cassette decks, circuit-bent toys, optokinetic instruments, kitchen knives and massage tools. Her work refuses narrow ideas of authenticity or sacred tradition, using noise as protest and the sitar as a site of rupture, self-definition and resistance against the objectification of the South Asian woman’s body in popular culture.
ADNAN NAQVI / ADNZN.1198 works with systems of listening and attunement, moving through layered electronics, voice and sampled material. His sound sits between dub-informed structures and processional drift, extending into texts, moving image, forensic reports, multi-channel composition and audio technologies. A former audio investigator at Earshot, he is currently resident at n-space, Somerset House Studios’ programme for interdisciplinary experimentation across art and technology.
A rare convergence of South Asian experimental practice, ritual electronics, instrument mutation and live processing - no polite fusion, this is something materially exacting, politically charged and alive to sound as memory, protest and transformation.
🎟 £18 door / £16 advance / £12 members
→ Tickets via link in stories and cafeoto.co.uk
→ Doors 7:30pm
DICIAMO 'NO' AL PADIGLIONE DEL GENOCIDIO
Solidarietá con @angalliance
Solidarietá con @bds.movement
Solidarietá con la Palestina 🇵🇸
Marching down the Lido with friends and comrades last summer was the first and only time I have felt at home in my fatherland. The movement is beautiful and strong.
Featuring a guest appearance from @paolideluca ❤️ after our screening @settimana_della_critica
PALESTINA LIBERA 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
📷 🎞️ Kodak Colorplus & 250D.
Imran Perretta’s empathetic lens discovers an incredible intimacy, evoked by subtle performances, luminous black-and-white imagery, and a swelling score in ISH 🖤
The #TIFFNextWave Toronto Premiere follows a childhood friendship as it is torn apart after a traumatic interaction with the police.
Don’t forget to get your Under-25 Free Pass to unlock your free ticket to Official Selection screenings - link in bio.
TIFF Next Wave Film Festival is presented by @takiscanada .
Last month the 'Grounding Practice: Methods in Filmmaking' - series took place at Somerset House featuring our LUX Artists!
The series gave our artists the chance to unpack their filmmaking process with a key collaborator and allow audiences a look behind the artistic and logistical choices made during their creative process. The events comprised of:
A screening of 'Denim Sky' (2018-2022) followed by a conversation with LUX artist Rosalind Nashashibi and the film's producer Denna Cartamkhoob.
A screening of 'Destructors' (2019) followed by a conversation with LUX Artist Imran Peretta and the film's producer and our very own director Ali Roche, who produced the work.
Both artists' are distributed by LUX, so if you are interested in viewing or showcasing their works please contact [email protected].
Image 2: 'Destructors', Imran Perretta, 2019
Image 4: 'Denim Sky', Rosalind Nashashibi, 2018-2022
Join artist and filmmaker @imranperretta for a screening of the destructors (23 mins), shot on location in Tower Hamlets and following young Muslim men navigating surveillance, belonging and coming of age in post-9/11 Britain.
After the screening, Perretta is joined by producer @ali___roche for an informal discussion on the filmmaking process and how to tell urgent stories from lived experience.
Part of Grounding Practice: Methods in Filmmaking, a two-night series offering an inside look at how films are made, from creative risk-taking and practical problem-solving to the breakthroughs that shape the final work. Each session begins with a screening, followed by an informal conversation with the director and a key collaborator.
Due to popular demand, we’ve added 10 extra tickets for both events! Book via link in bio or on the Somerset House website.
Join artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Imran Perretta across two nights of Grounding Practice: Methods in Filmmaking, an inside look at how films are made, from creative risk-taking and practical problem-solving to the breakthroughs that shape the final work. Each session begins with a screening, followed by an informal conversation with the director and their key collaborator on that film.
17 Feb: The making of Denim Sky
@rosishibi 's feature-film in three parts, is a playful exploration of non-nuclear family and community structures, the theoretical effects of non-linear time travel on human relationships, and how this could aid or problematise communication. Following the screening (67 mins), Nashashibi is joined by producer Denna Cartamkhoob.
24 Feb: The making of the destructors
Shot on location in Tower Hamlets, @imranperretta 's film follows young Muslim men navigating surveillance, belonging and coming of age in post-9/11 Britain. After the screening (23 mins), Perretta is joined by producer @ali___roche to discuss process, place and telling urgent stories from lived experience.
If you're interested in film making, or in the process of making your own film - pay what you can, link in bio for booking!
“It’s really just scenes from my teenage years,” said Imran Perretta of his debut feature, Ish, which premiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival—where it won the section’s People’s Choice Award—and later screened at the 69th BFI London Film Festival.
The film intimately observes the psychological toll of police violence on young Muslim boys in the UK. It follows the titular Ishmail—or “Ish” (Farhan Hasnat), who is grieving the loss of his mother—and his best friend, Maram (Yahya Kitana), during their summer vacation. Ish is Bangladeshi, and Maram is Palestinian. They live in the immigrant-populated town of Luton, on the outskirts of London, and spend their days leisurely around the expansive woodlands of Bedfordshire, until an encounter with the police irreversibly transforms their dynamic.
Perretta is the son of a Bangladeshi mother and an Italian father. The 37-year-old interdisciplinary artist, musician, and filmmaker grew up in South London, coming of age in a post-9/11 UK. His artworks, spanning moving image, sound, composition, performance art, and poetry, examine themes of migration, identity, and belonging, focusing on state violence, the repression of racialized communities, and contested public spaces.
When the opportunity arose to write a feature, Perretta naturally looked back to his teenage years that he described as “formative on several levels.” It was both a moment he became an adult and experienced political awakening, which, to him, felt contingent on each other.
Read Kaashif Hajee’s (@kaashifhajee ) interview with Imran Perretta (@imranperretta ) at the link in bio.
To brother @dhiraj_mahey
Huge congratulations🥂on your @BIFA Breakthrough Producer Award for Ish! It was a total honour to receive it on your behalf this time last week and I can't think of anyone who deserves it more.
There aren't enough thanks in the universe for everything you have done for me. You lead with kindness and grace, no matter the weather, and that's why we all love you. 🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽
So keep enjoying your moment my bro, you bloody deserve it!
Devotional pics by me. Tri x, portra and digital. 🖤 🤍 🌈 🤖
Three of our titles at Marrakech International Film Festival!
The festival, taking place from November 28th to December 6th, will feature:
ISH, dir. Imran Perretta, Sales Agent: Global Constellation, in COMPETITION
STRAIGHT CIRCLE, dir. Oscar Hudson, Sales Agent: Global Constellation, in COMPETITION
ROCK THE CASBAH, dir. Laïla Marrakchi, Sales Agent: Pathé International, in HOMMAGES
#miff #filmfest #filmfestivals #ish #straightcircle #rockthecasbah #marrakech #marrakechinternationalfilmfestival
