Production has wrapped on Not Like Us, a romantic comedy filmed in East London starring Sabrina Elba and Ashley Thomas. The debut feature is written and directed by Ramla Ali and Richard A. Moore.
The film follows Amina Hassan, a forty-something Somali pharmacist and single mother who has built everything herself, her business, her reputation and her carefully controlled life, only to have it upended when she falls for a Jamaican man named Edmund Clarke in defiance of her family and community. Complicating things further are three meddling community aunties who have decided Amina needs a husband despite their own marriages being, as the synopsis puts it, “works in progress.” The film is described as “a story about love, desire, and the right to choose your own happiness, told entirely from within the community it depicts.” Sofia Oxenham also stars.
Not Like Us was independently financed after Ali and Moore described difficulties working within the traditional British funding infrastructure. It is produced by Sunita Mirchandani Hyams and Luke Hyams of Pangaea Group alongside Andrew Conrad and Gina Carter of 22 Summers. Richard Fearn of Affine Films serves as executive producer. The production team is targeting a 2027 release.
Ali and Moore bring a direct personal connection to the material. Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia and grew up in East London and is a former Olympic boxer whose life story will be chronicled in the upcoming biopic In The Shadows, arriving in UK cinemas in October. Moore is a white British man who converted to Islam when the pair married in 2016.
Elba, a Canadian actress, model and activist, is best known for her role in Three Thousand Years of Longing and has upcoming projects including the feature Nuur directed by Lula Ali Ismaïl and the sci-fi film White Mars. Thomas, a British actor also known by his rapper stage name Bashy, is known for his work in Them, Top Boy, Black Cake and 24: Legacy.