Music, Style & Culture

Interview: Sket Director Nirpal Bhogal

We talk to the British director about his gritty girl gang drama.

Premiering at the 55th BFI London Film Festival this month was Sket, a unique take on gangland London.

Told from the perspective of the girls who get caught up in the harsh inner city lifestyle, it's a surprisingly sensitive tale, made with respect by new British filmmaker Nirpal Bhogal. The director follows up his acclaimed Cold Kiss, a powerful short about knife crime starring Ray Winstone, after being recruited to tackle the thorny subject of girl gangs.

The director worked closely with youth groups to understand women's involvement, and the result is a drama featuring fleshed-out characters and stand-out performances. Aimee Kelly makes her screen debut as Kayla, a motherless teen who moves from Newcastle to join her older sister in London. When the sister is attacked by the sickeningly aggressive gang leader Trey (Ashley Walters) she finds herself falling into a local girl gang led by the charismatic and volatile Danielle (Emma Hartley-Miller). The vulnerable Kayla finds it easy to get swept up in the violence and retribution that pervades in the estate.

Revolver release Sket in UK cinemas 28th October. We caught up with Bhogal to talk about research, casting and filming violence.

Do you feel a responsibility when making a film about such a subject?
Massively. Every filmmaker should feel responsibility, a) to an audience, and b) if you're conveying something that can incite violence, or incite young people into doing things that could harm them.

Do you find yourself compromising on storylines, with regards balancing the narrative with social issues?
The most important thing to do, first and foremost, is to tell a great story. You want to make your political point, but you don't want to be overly political, because message films are dull. I hate message films that say 'this is what you should believe'. I think the whole point is to just create debate. My dream was to create debate, leave the audience with a sense of compassion towards everyone in the movie, and then I've done my job. And obviously make a great film!

You worked with the Safe'N'Sound project - what was their key advice?
So much. The main advice I got was from people in the Peckham area, in terms of dialogue and believability - believe it or not, things have moved on quickly since I was a kid! It was the first time I thought to myself, why don't we use that word anymore - it was a perfectly good word! Another thing was learning about how they viewed women - the whole concept of female violence was interesting.

The girls you spoke to, what were the stand-out reasons for gang violence that kept coming up?
It was religious oppression and masculine oppression. That was always it - I didn't get anything but those two. Huge amount of religious oppression. The same stories - saw the hypocrisy, started to rebel, fell in deep, go home and get shouted at, feel even more disconnected. Suddenly the people at street level become closer to them, and that was their family. A lot of us forget how difficult it is when you're like 14 or 15. You don't know who you are and you're desperately trying to cling on to something and find a place for yourself. It's so easy, if you haven't got an authority figure, to go off and find it elsewhere, which is what Sket's about really. With Kayla's story, she hasn't got any of that structure. She finds in Danielle a maternal figure.

You cast from all around the country - it's amazing to realised Emma (Danielle) is Scottish because of her incredibly authentic accent.
Our casting director, Jane Ripley, was incredible at finding talent. We auditioned loads of people, because we wanted to get it right. Revolver were great in supporting me when I said I needed more auditions. I just cast the best people - I didn't care where they were from, as long as they could do the accent. Emma was in character for the whole of Christmas. She told me that she started to get really aggressive. She really got lost in this character.

Where did you shoot the film, as the estate is incredibly intimidating?
Hoxton, Old Street, and an estate near Abbey Road. An architect had accidentally created the perfect place for crime. You can duck in and out of anything, and you can hear footsteps, whistles and police stuff.



The character of Trey has no redeeming qualities at all - why did you write him that way? He was a monster.
Did you really feel that? That's interesting, as the other comments I've had are why did you make him so sympathetic. You know what - the men find the sympathy, and women find him a monster. If you look closer at him, and his ways and his inner monologue, he's really lost. He's on a downward spiral. Pride is such a masculine thing, and when you're in high authority, as a man, it's incredibly dangerous, as you don't want people to make mistakes. I had to learn this the hard way as a director when I first started working, how to say, 'this isn't working, let's try something else. It's the same with Trey - he's at the stage where everything's collapsing around him, but he can't quite admit that he wants to leave. It was never intentional to make him unsympathetic, it was just how you viewed it at that moment. Either way, it does its job.

It's a relatively short film - were there angles you wanted to explore more?
There's a director's cut, which goes in a lot deeper with the emotional stuff. Also, you have to think about the audience, and I think 90 minutes is enough for the story. I have a pretentious director's cut that I adore, but my producer - who has great integrity - sat down with me and discussed what would be cut. There's not a lot of moments of lightness, and without that, if I hit the two hour mark, you'd come out not wanting to talk about it, but wanting a pint or to watch something funny.

The violence is upsetting, but a lot of it is implied. Was that intentional?
Very much so - we're talking about responsibility again. It's about the characters and the emotion. I didn't even shoot the violence - we shot reactions. Reactions, not in the blood on the face sense, but we shot reactions, as in performance. Every single violent scene in that film is a pivotal plot point. There's nothing that's gratuitous. There's nothing that's in there because it looks good - it all changes the character arc. A lot in the film is ambiguous, so people talk about it. We could spell out a lot. If we say Kayla's mother died of X, she ran away from X, straight away your audience thinks, 'I can't relate to that'.

What do you think the answer is to gang culture?
I think the word 'gang' is massively overused. When I was younger, I would sit in a park with my friends, and I had my first ever beer in a park, and today we'd be considered a gang. I would've been pushed into being in a gang, because that's all they would see you as. In terms of an answer - there have always been gangs around. There's no more violence today then there was in the Eighties, when you had the race riots. Now the violence is more accessible because we can film it on our phones and upload it. If our governments keep letting us down, if civil structure keeps letting these kids down... If you're told at an early age, we're not helping to get you into care, we're not helping your parents, and you're told by proxy that your life is meaningless, why would you then respect other peoples lives, goods and values. Because you are told that your life is not as important as those who have more money than you. And that's what's wrong. Paying for all these reports and stuff isn't going to fix it, because it's not gang violence that's doing it in this country, it's hypocrisy from higher up. You can only be as good as the people leading you. You're completely disempowered at that level. The only way you can escape is through education. That's why they really love music, as it's an escape and it's a way to get your point across. The government's taken away every aspect of anything these kids can do, so the civil unrest is going to get worse. Then they'll just write reports on it.