Polite Society Rating
Polite Society
Working Title Films, Parkville Pictures
Focus Features
My Rating
6/10
#whatonwhatsgood Fan Club Rating
66%
Release dates
21 January 2023 (Sundance)
28 April 2023
Description
Polite Society is a London-set anarchic action comedy that follows Ria Khan, a bolshy schoolgirl and martial artist-in-training who dreams of becoming a world-renowned stunt woman. When Ria witnesses her big sister Lena give up on her dreams by dropping out of art school and getting engaged, Ria’s world is shaken. She believes she must save her sister from the shackles of marriage in the only way she knows how, by enlisting the help of her friends and attempting to pull off the most ambitious of all wedding heists in the name of freedom and sisterhood. Polite Society is a merry mash-up of sisterly affection, parental disappointment, and bold and bloody action.
Directed by
Nida Manzoor
Written by
Nida Manzoor
Produced by
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Olivier Kaempfer and John Pocock
Starring
Priya Kansara as Ria Khan / The Fury
Ritu Arya as Lena Khan
Nimra Bucha as Raheela
Akshay Khanna as Salim
Jeff Mirza as Rafe Khan, Ria and Lena's father
Ella Bruccoleri as Alba
Seraphina Beh as Clara
Shona Babayemi as Kovacs
Shobu Kapoor as Ria and Lena's mother
Sally Ann as Edith
Cinematography
Ashley Connor
Edited by
Robbie Morrison
Music by
Tom Howe and Shez Manzoor
Nida Manzoor discusses Polite Society
“It's been a long road but I have now been able to make the feature film of my dreams.”“My favorite thing about making film and television is the opportunity to bring marginalized communities into mainstream genres – action, sci-fi, comedy”
“Occupying areas of storytelling we are so often invisible in. I love writing comedy. It’s my go to form of expression when I put pen to paper, my most natural form of storytelling. I feel comedy is the most disarming of all the genres. If done well it can make us warm to characters from different backgrounds deeply and immediately.”
“I wanted to make a film about two sisters that grounds the sister love story because I don't think we really get to see that in a lot of films”
“I drew from my own relationship with my sister. It’s such a close, intimate and loving relationship but when you fight with your siblings, that kind of fighting can be the most brutal.”
“At the beginning of the story, you see two sisters who have the best friendship you could imagine, and over the course of the film that friendship is really pulled apart after Lena gives up on her dreams to become an artist and decides to get married,” says Manzoor. “And so Ria tries to break up her sister’s semi-arranged marriage by performing an elaborate heist and getting into a crazy kung-fu fight! But while it's an over-the-top comedy, it really focuses on sisterhood and friendship because we don't often get to see that, especially not in a film with action and dance numbers. It was a chance for me to mix all the films I grew up on – Jackie Chan movies, Bollywood movies, The Matrix, and mash it into a wild film about sisterhood which has been so exciting.”
“When Priya Kansara came in, I'd not seen or heard of her before but she was instantly so captivating”
“She is so hugely talented. When you film her, she lights up the screen. She's also the kindest, most generous person to work with and she would lift the entire crew when she walked on set. She's the ultimate movie star in my opinion. She also did most of her own stunts!”
“I hope audiences enjoy the story, the spectacle, and the fun of a film that is a love story between two South Asian sisters and their sisterhood. It is something we don't often get to see – especially not within this genre – and it has been so genuinely exciting for me. Growing up feeling the weight of being a well-behaved young woman and the pressure that comes with expectations of ‘polite society,’ I find it deeply cathartic to make films that blend genres, are anarchic, irreverent and don’t abide by any rules and norms. Cinema can be whatever you want it to be and anyone can make it.”
“I first came across Nida in 2016 when I saw her short, Arcade, which is still one of my favorite shorts to this day”
“It immediately felt so different and fresh compared to so many other shorts that I was seeing. She was a filmmaker I wanted to meet and ideally develop a feature with and that feature became Polite Society. Nida is quite rare in that she has very bold and original ideas but she can also execute them. She was very much our creative leader and she has the vision that we’re all behind so it’s been fantastic.”
Ritu Arya, who plays Lena, discusses Polite Society
“Nida is a fantastic director who is doing amazing things”
“It’s the third time I've worked with her and every time it’s just gotten better and better. Our DP, Ashley, is such a badass and she was always trying out different things as well. Then even the grips and the sound department were full of women which felt so cool. On top of all of that, it has been so empowering to have this ensemble consist of such a diverse – primarily South Asian – cast. I'm so happy that this film exists. It’s what I’ve been waiting to see for a very long time.”
“Ria is trying to pick me up and snap me out of it”
“And in turn, Lena helps Ria with her ambition to be a stuntwoman. She’s her biggest cheerleader and champion and it’s beautiful to see two sisters really trying their best to help each other. Priya and I had a really fun time together. I adore her.”
Priya Kansara who plays Ria Khan discusses Polite Society
“I thought, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever read!”
“It was so fresh and I’d never read anything like it before. The beauty of this film is that it has so many references and so many nods to different types of cinema and through Ria, I got to experience all of that. It was like doing seven movies in one because I got to do the stunts and the fighting, I got to dance, ride bikes, scale buildings and be torture-waxed and play all the way from funny to incredibly emotional. It was really fun to have such versatility in one project.”
“She’s a fearless, unstoppable, completely mad teenager.”
“She’s so much fun and she knows exactly what she wants. Her lifelong dream is to be a stuntwoman and she even has her own YouTube channel where she makes videos and she’s super dedicated to it. When it comes to her relationship with her parents, they don’t really understand it but they’re also not the kind of parents to stop her from doing what she loves.”
“Ritu is genuinely like a sister to me. The banter and the jokes that we make on screen are very much the jokes that the two of us would make off-screen, too. This movie is a love story between two sisters because this entire series of events take place because she loves her sister so much. As an artist, Lena chose to do something slightly different, something that wasn’t as accepted but she followed her dream and she went to art school. Ria admires her for doing that and really sees a lot of herself in her sister.”
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