Nida Manzoor shoots her first film
- Nida Manzoor, the creator of We Are Lady Parts, has written and is currently directing her first film
- Feminist action comedy Polite Society is a heist caper focused on two British-Pakistani sisters
- Manzoor says that she wants "to make sure I keep it in my tone ... I write in a certain style and I want to keep that voice"
We Are Lady Parts creator Nida Manzoor is shooting her first film, a feminist action comedy.
Focusing on two British-Pakistani sisters, Polite Society is described as a heist movie.
Manzoor, whose parents are Pakistani, has written and directs the feature, which is being filmed in London by Lady Parts' production company Working Title (Shaun Of The Dead), with Focus Features (Promising Young Woman) and Parkville Pictures (The Miseducation Of Cameron Post).
Polite Society's producers include Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who executive produced Lady Parts.
Cast details have yet to emerge. But Manzoor, who also directed Enterprice for BBC Three, told film website Screen that she wanted "to make sure I keep it in my tone ... I write in a certain style and I want to keep that voice."
Airing on Channel 4, as well as in the US, Australia and New Zealand, We Are Lady Parts, a sitcom about an all-female Muslim punk band, has been a critical hit and a second series is set to air later this year. The Guardian praised Manzoor's "pleasingly knowing" writing and the sitcom's "wry observations about the complexities of modern womanhood".
Vogue called it a "riotous comedy that's unlike anything you've seen before", while the Financial Times observed that its "progressive representations highlight a truth about being a modern-day Muslim: you can be both God-fearing and weed-smoking; disorderly and devotional.
"Far from a clash, these things reflect a cultural mish-mash of the tangled and contradictory parts of ourselves that make us delightfully, bafflingly human."