{"id":724044,"date":"2026-08-02T07:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724044\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T07:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:25:08","slug":"ish-director-finds-first-time-luton-actors-for-acclaimed-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/724044\/","title":{"rendered":"Ish director finds first-time Luton actors for acclaimed film"},"content":{"rendered":"

The director of a critically acclaimed new film found his young cast of first-time actors by visiting schools and youth clubs.<\/p>\n

Imran Perretta’s debut film, Ish, follows two 12-year-old friends from Luton’s South Asian and Middle Eastern communities, whose relationship is disrupted after a police stop and search.<\/p>\n

In an eight-month casting process, the filmmaker visited sports clubs and community centres across Bedfordshire to find his actors to ensure the movie felt “authentic”.<\/p>\n

He said: “I think that Ish is a film that is trying to be a bit of a portrait of Luton… if you’re going to do a portrait of a place, the people have got to come from there as well.”<\/p>\n

The film, which was released on Friday, has earned positive reviews since it was first screened at festivals last year.<\/p>\n

It has been described as “the British debut movie of the year” by The Guardian, external<\/a>, while critic Mark Kermode called it “one of my favourite films of the year” on his podcast Kermode and Mayo’s Take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The director of a critically acclaimed new film found his young cast of first-time actors by visiting schools…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}