Four Lions

Four Lions is a satire directed by Chris Morris and co-written with Jesse Armtrong and Sam Bain. It is the story of five Muslims from the North of England who want to become suicide bombers, even though they do not know what to destroy or why. They are just convinced that it is the thing that a Muslim has to do.

The scene is set in London, where the five men intend to strike. In order to prepare themselves, two of them, Omar (Riz Ahmed) and Waj (Kayvan Novak), go to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. The other three are Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a white Islamist convert, Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), the one who makes bombs, and Hassan (Arsher Ali), recruited by Barry.
Fortunately, the wannabe terrorists use quite the wrong way to achieve their ends. They appear incompetent and even idiot. For example, Faisal will accidentally kill himself during a training exercise. In the following excerpt, the leader Omar finds out that one of his men bought all the materiel to make a bomb in the same shop, and what is more, near their hiding-place.



The idea of such a movie was born in Chris’ head four or five years ago. At that time he read an article about a terror attack that failed. After three years of research including speaking to terrorism experts, ordinary Muslims, imams and many others, Chris Morris sees his project rejected by the BBC and Channel 4. These ones judged it too controversial.
The director relies then on his fans: in exchange of their donations to the production costs, the fans had the opportunity to be extras in his film. The shooting finally began in Sheffield in May 2009 and came out on the 23rd January 2010.


Laurence Henriet and Bérangère Piccinin.