Parky At the Pictures (31/7/2026)

(Review is Ish)

ISH.

`If you don't decide who you are, other people gonna decide for you,' says one of the two teenage protagonists in Ish, a potent, but poignant rite of passage inspired by feature debutant Imran Perretta's own experiences.

It's the summer holidays and 12 year-olds Ishmail (Farhan Hasnat) and Maram (Yahya Kitana) are hanging in the woods outside Luton. Bantering in roadman-speak, they pick blackberries and make a den out of a discarded mattress and some plastic sheeting. Aeroplanes pass over the treetops en route to the airport, but they are a world away from the bustling streets of their neighbourhood, where police cars are forever on the prowl.

Ish's Bangladeshi grandmother (Sudha Bhuchar) is wary of Maram, as she feels an extra responsibility since the recent death of his mother. However, sister Samira (Joy Crookes) and father Naeem (Avin Shah) see no harm in the friendship and play along when he comes to the house after a cemetery visit and asks what's for lunch. The boys play video games until Maram's cabby father, Hanan (Zubin Varla), grumpily collects him (even though he came on his bike) and they grumble about their fathers during a late-night video call, which is ended by Naeem getting back late from his shift at Luton Airport.

Taller than Ish and sporting a hint of a moustache, Maram lets his pal ride of the handlebars of his bike. They bury a tin box full of sharp tools because Maram is convinced they need to be ready to defend themselves in the coming war. He calls the cops `the IDF' because he has watched so many online videos of attacks on Gaza, but Ish doesn't really understand and contributes a torch to the armoury.

Heading to the visiting funfair in the park, Ish is puzzled why Maram changes his walk when they pass a group of white lads and shrugs when he warns that it's better to decide your identity for yourself rather than have someone else impose it. They go on the dodgems and Maram gets some temporary tattoos. But Ish feels left out when he tags along with some older friends - Zakie (Arman Muhammad), Arfaz (Is'Haaq Hasan Haque), and Cheydan (Hasnain Shah) - who have their own brand of patois and chat to girls. As they walk behind the trio, Maram puts a reassuring hand on Ish's shoulder, but the action cuts away to the surrounding streets, where a patrol car is using facial recognition technology on innocent passers-by.

While Maram and his friends watch someone burning rubber outside a car pound, Ish sits alone on some steps. He doesn't even smile when one of the lads discovers the girl he chatted up has given him a fake phone number. As they walk home along a quiet, residential street, Ish remains sullen. But he notices an unmarked white van following them and bolts when a siren sounds and it speeds up alongside Maram. Cursing himself for his cowardice, Ish hides behind a wall before peering round a wheelie bin to see Maram being shoved out of the van. He calls for his friend, but cycles away when he sees him cowering behind the bin. Meandering home dejectedly, with his hood up and his hands on his head, Ish is lost with his friend to call and slinks off to his room.

The next day, he waits for Maram by the car lot, but ends up spending the day with Zakie, Cheydan, and Arfaz, although they tease him at first and he feels self-conscious when they wander into a convenience store in a bid to shoplift some fireworks. Samira sees him with the gang, as one daubs `Free Gaza' on a phone booth, and steers her grandmother away. Walking home, Ish pulls his hood up as he passes Maram's house and hopes he hasn't been noticed.

Grandmother asks after `that Palestinian boy' when Ish mooches around the garden while she is trying to have a quiet smoke. But he doesn't reply. With his sister out, he goes into his parents' room and looks through his mother's box of keepsakes. Naeem gets in to find him asleep on the bed and covers him with a blanket before lying down beside him in his airport uniform.

Ish is left to sit alone when Maram joins the gang on the bus to the swimming pool. He shivers in the water, as the others fool around and annoy the security guards when they try to hold Ish under. In the changing room, he overhears Maram telling Afzal how Ish had run away and left him to be interrogated by the cops about his mosque and hangouts. Dawdling behind Maram on the walk back from the bus stop, Ish pushes back when he's told to shove off and his misery is compounded when he gets punched in the face. He delays getting home and argues with Samira when she catches sight of his lip. He accuses her of trying to be his mother.

Caught in the rain by the den, Ish gets soaked and Cheydan takes pity on him when he bumps into them. He offers him his jacket and Ish joins the foursome in a firework raid on the market. The owner recognises him and threatens to tell his father that he is consorting with ruffians, but the fuss enables Zakie to break the cupboard lock and steal a bagful of fireworks, which they proceed to let off in the woods. However, they put on such a show that they get arrested and Ish cuts a sorry figure in the back of the police van.

His father says nothing, as he leaves Ish to stew in his room. The next day, grandmother makes him do housework and he joins her when she prays. He asks what she has done to need forgiveness and she admits that she sometimes prays in anger. Samira tries to sell her car, but it's a taxi that pulls up outside the house and Ish hides as Maram's father bangs on the door and demands to know why Ish grassed on him to the cops. Naeem orders him to calm down and expresses his disappointment when Maram's father suggests he has lost control since his wife died. Reassuring his son that things will work themselves out, Naeem leaves Ish to be hugged by his frightened grandmother.

She helps him cook a tart after he finds berries growing on a wizened bush in the garden. Samira puts cream on his cracked knuckles and he watches birds fly away from the towering pylon near the house. Nearby, as two cops leave their vehicle unattended to chase a couple of kids, someone shatters their windscreen with a rock. Father takes son for a haircut and they pass through some away fans heading for Kenilworth Road chanting about Luton being a shithole. But it's home for the Alams and they pray together at their loved one's grave before taking a taxi home. Ish threatens to snitch on Samira for going clubbing when she said she was at work and everyone laughs. However, he falls quiet when an open-top car overtakes and he sees Maram sitting in the back seat with some new mates and he realises that their friendship is over, as they are heading in very different directions.

Comparisons have been made between this auspicious debut and Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955) and François Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959). However, those who have detected similarities with Ken Loach's Kes (1969) feel much wider of the mark, as Ish has a supportive family, even when he's in the wrong. But, while the mentioned influences are there, Imran Perretta and Irish co-scenarist Enda Walsh have produced an original study of troubled adolescence and male bonding that doubles as a denunciation of modern police profiling methods, particularly when it comes to urban Black and Muslim youth.

Indeed, Perretta had already covered similar territory in his video installation the destructors (2019), which followed on from such early outings as Brother to Brother (2017) and 15 Days (2018). As the bio on his Film London page reads: `Imran Perretta works across the moving-image, sound, performance and poetry. Perretta's practice addresses biopower, marginality and the (de)construction of cultural histories. Underpinning his work are questions of alterity and neo-coloniality, meditating on the process of identity forming in a post-9/11 era characterized by austerity, state-sponsored Islamophobia and the War on Terror.'

But there's nothing polemical about this fine first feature, which makes it socio-political points with a finesse that is encapsulated by the use of audio news bulletins and discussions to remind the audience of how events happening far away impact upon their own doorsteps. The soundscape is complemented by a haunting score that Perretta composed himself. But it's his direction of the young leads that most impresses.

As Perretta's teacher wife had grown up in Luton, he knew it would be the perfect setting and auditioned 900 local boys for Ish and Maram. Ironically, Farhan Hasnat and Yahya Kitana turned out to have been inseparable since they were toddlers and their in-tuneness is evident in the way they bounce off each other in the opening scenes.

Newcomers Is'haaq Hasan Haque, Arman Mohammed, and Hasnain Shah also impress, although it isn't made clear who is Cheydan, Zakie, or Afzal, so apologies if any credit guesses were wrong. Avin Shah and Sudha Bhuchar also contribute deft performances, with the former's doorstep confrontation with Sagar Arya's Mr Ahmed being played with affecting dignity. Singer Joy Crookes also debuts to good effect, although more might have been made of her life outside the family. That said, the overall characterisation is a bit sketchy and this makes the denouement feel slightly moist (as Lutonian teens might say).

Shooting in five weeks on a limited budget, Perretta wisely opted to use black and white (in a silent era 4:3 aspect ratio) to enable cinematographer Jermaine Canute Edwards to give Luton a mix of ethereality and authenticity that colour would not have been able to achieve. Adam Biskupski's editing and Jens Rosenlund Petersen and Nina Hartstone's sound editing are also key. But it's the evocatively lit, low-angle imagery that reinforces the Apu and Antoine Doinel connections (dare we hope for a follow-up?) - although it has to be said that Kes would not have been the same if Brian Glover's Manchester United shirt had not been Bobby Charlton red.