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Dirty Pretty Things (film)

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Dirty Pretty Things
Promotional film poster
Directed byStephen Frears
Written bySteven Knight
Produced byRobert Jones,
Tracey Seaward
StarringChiwetel Ejiofor,
Sophie Okonedo,
Israel Aduramo,
Sergi López,
Benedict Wong,
Audrey Tautou
CinematographyChris Menges
Edited byMick Audsley
Music byNathan Larson
Release date
December 13, 2002 (UK)
Running time
93 min
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguagesEnglish,
Somali

Dirty Pretty Things (2002) is a movie directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight, a drama about two illegal immigrants in London. It was produced by the Celador Films production company.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won a British Independent Film Award for "Best Independent British Film" in 2003.

Plot

Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian who drives a cab in London during the day and mans the front desk of a hotel by night — chewing khat (a stimulant) to keep awake. Formerly a doctor in Africa, he is pressed into giving medical aid to other poor immigrants — including fellow cab drivers with venereal diseases.

Okwe shares an apartment with Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish woman who works as a maid in the same hotel. The two immigrants form a hesitant friendship, but their situation becomes untenable when immigration police begin to pursue her. She quits the hotel and takes a job in a clothing sweatshop, where the owner forces her, a virgin, to perform oral sex upon him under threat of reporting her. After initially enduring this humiliation, she bites his genitals and flees both the factory and her apartment — taking refuge in a morgue with a friend of Okwe's.

The manager of the hotel, Juan (Sergi López), runs an illegal operation at the hotel where immigrants sell a kidney in exchange for passports with new identities. Learning of Okwe's past as a doctor, he pressures him to harvest kidneys, but he refuses.

In desperation, Senay agrees to exchange a kidney for a passport. Juan forces her to have sex with him before permitting her to undergo the operation. Upon learning of Senay's plan, Okwe tells Juan that he will perform the operation to ensure her safety. However, Okwe and Senay actually drug Juan, harvest his kidney, and sell it to Juan's contact — having also obtained their new passports from Juan.

The film ends with Senay and Okwe in the airport. Although they have fallen in love over the course of their trials, he must return to his young daughter in Nigeria (where his wife had been killed and he had been wrongly accused of the murder) and she leaves to start a new life in New York City.

Cast

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