I watched this on BBC 2 a few weeks ago, and made a note to review it.
The movie turned out to be a quality low-key small-budget British drama, this time about a group of people on a Merseyside allotment of which a number of plots have been earmarked for asylum seekers who have experienced trauma on the way to their new lives.
Thrown into the mix are a mobile phone company which wants to install a mast on the site, a bit of racism, plenty of love and allotment rebel Kenny.
Grow Your Own 2007
Benedict Wong is brilliant as Kung Sang, who has withdrawn into himself so much that he now longer speaks and his two young children are his only voice.
Allotment boss John is keen to ensure the mast goes on the site of one of the asylum seekers, but as the characters interact and get to know each other, the balance of power begins to shift.
Partly based on a genuine project undertaken in Liverpool, this film was produced by former bassist with The Farm, Carl Hunter, who, as was not always the case with his former band, does an excellent job.
Richard Laxton’s direction is sympathetic and allows the change in the relationships to slowly unfold in a story that — be it set in a school, the workplace or on a sports field — we more or less witness in some form every day.
Benedict Wong … Kung Sang
Eddie Marsan … Little John
Omid Djalili … Ali
Alan Williams … Kenny
Philip Jackson … Big John
Pearce Quigley … Eddie
John Henshaw … Charlie
Olivia Colman … Alice
Joanna Scanlan … Barbara
Sarah Hadland … Carla
Roland Manookian … Mike
Diveen Henry … Miriam
Mel Raido … Nick
Sophie Stanton … Debbie
Sophie Lee … Phoenix
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August 31st, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Grow Your Own did not begin – as most of my films have done – with a round of pitches and commissions in film company offices. It grew from a seed that was planted and nurtured in “Art in Action” – a long-established community arts project based in Bootle.
Carl Hunter – who helps the project – was approached by Margrit Ruegg and asked to make a short video to promote and help raise funds for an extraordinary enterprise. Margrit is a psychotherapist and the director of the Family Refugee Support Project in Liverpool. The people she works with have had terrible experiences in their home countries, and were trying to cope with the physical and mental aftereffects of those experiences in the sometimes inhospitable atmosphere of their adopted city. Under Margrit’s scheme, these people were given – not drugs – but allotments.
The theory was simple. Many asylum seekers have difficulty sleeping and are vulnerable to bouts of depression and lethargy. Gardening provides structure, social contact and a drug-free path to total exhaustion. Many refugees had been very productive in their home countries (we met headteachers, engineers, even a leading clothes designer on the scheme), so they found the enforced idleness of asylum seeking (applicants are not allowed to do paid work) hard to take. Producing fruit and veg for the family table helped with that. Margrit had £2,000 with which she hoped Carl could make a 10-minute video presentation to help her raise funding. From the moment I heard about it, I could barely contain myself.
An inspiring story, epic in scope, was unfolding under our own noses. Carl wanted to make a feature documentary – something in the tradition of Etre et Avoir. He planned to visit the allotments every week for a year, charting their transformation from virtual rubbish heap into productive plots. The audience would also see the participants’ self-confidence blossom and their spoken English change. It would be a ready-made fable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2007/may/10/cultivatinggrowyourown