[image]
[title]
Documentary-maker Daisy Asquith’s new three-part series on multiculturalism in Britain charts a trio of 11-year-olds from their arrival to the UK, with no mums, no English and no clue as to what to expect, to their lives five years on.
Asquith tracks the ups and downs of integration through warm interviews with the children that show both the dark and light sides of making a new home in a new country. For Altynay, from Kyrgyzstan, the shift is made easier by moving in with a family whose daughter is keen to show her the ropes: within months she’s talking of wanting to visit London to meet Britney, Eminem, Madonna and, er, Shakira. In North Shields, Marshal’s having a slightly tougher time reconnecting with the mum who left him in Zimbabwe , aged six. But it’s Imran, brought from a village he’s never left in Pakistan to an urban England filled with kids who are quick to tease and then bully this obvious outsider, that you really feel for. As Altynay says, ‘I wish the whole world spoke one language. Any language… and I could speak it.’