In a special edition this week, the industry magazine Screen International has nominated an array of British actors and directors as the stars of tomorrow.

The film industry publication said these were the "brightest new hopes of the British film industry."

Here, AIM magazine reproduces the biographies of actors and filmmakers of Asian origin.

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KHALID ABDALLA
Following his performance as the lead terrorist in Paul Greengrass' riveting United 93, the Anglo-Egyptian Khalid Abdalla stars in Marc Forster's adaptation of bestselling novel The Kite Runner, playing the narrator, who travels back to Kabul to exorcise his demons. The film is already being positioned as an Oscar contender.

"I'm very proud of the two films I've done so far," says the actor. "They go against the grain in terms of representations of Arab people. United 93 found humanity in all the characters and The Kite Runner shows an Afghanistan not identified by violence."
Contact: Julian Belfrage Associates, (44) 20 7287 8544


ARSHER ALI
"It's really a massive accident that I got into acting," says Arsher Ali. "I picked up a leaflet at college by mistake and decided to give it a go." Something obviously clicked because when Ali applied to London's renowned East 15 drama school he was accepted at the first attempt and then won the Laurence Olivier Student Award in his second year.

After graduating in 2006, he immediately landed a couple of small parts in TV dramas, followed by a supporting role in Peter Kosminsky's forthcoming Channel 4 film Britz, about Asian identity in the UK. He was then cast in Ayub Khan-Din's stage play Rafta Rafta, directed by Nicholas Hytner, at London's National Theatre, which will take him to November. It is that performance that is turning the heads of several UK casting directors, who have been impressed by his talent, charisma and watchability. Not bad for someone who had never considered acting.
Contact: PFD, (44) 20 7344 1010


MANJINDER VIRK
Manjinder Virk has recently completed the biggest challenge of her career. As the lead in Peter Kosminsky's Britz, opposite Riz Ahmed and fellow Star Of Tomorrow Arsher Ali, Virk plays a British Asian woman who is forced to make some tough choices after political events and her personal life unexpectedly collide. The film will screen on UK TV on Channel 4 in October.

Frustrated by the lack of roles for Asian actors, Virk has also turned to screenwriting. "There are so many different Asian communities and those complexities are just not explored in films," Virk says. She has certainly proved her versatility, with an impressive list of credits in theatre and television, including the acclaimed one-woman show Autobiography Of A Face, which she wrote and performed.
Contact: Hamilton Hodell, (44) 20 7636 1221


ZAM SALIM
Writer-director
Zam Salim is one of those prolific short-film directors who has been steadily maturing and growing in confidence. Over the past year, he has made so many shorts — mostly with no money and in his spare time — that the Eskisehir film festival in Turkey has just honoured him with a retrospective.

His quirky, inventive approach to stories and how to film them has resulted in a string of films that are visually stimulating, blackly comic and consistently surprising. They include Laid Off (which was nominated for a 2006 Scottish Bafta and has just won the best film and audience awards at the Jim Poole Scottish Film Awards), Mashed, Original Bob and Cold Light Of Day.

He is winning fans in the industry, too: BBC Films’ Ed Rubin admires his skill at taking “seemingly mundane subjects and making them both thought-provoking and, at times, extremely funny”. Salim is now developing a television drama about an inner-city boxing gym, working on a YouTube project for the BBC and writing two screenplays.
Contact: PFD, (44) 20 7344 1000


KOTHAI KANTHAN
Writer-director
Former news reporter and documentary-maker Kothai Kanthan moved into fiction film-making in 2005 with Simple Protest and Living In Silence. Her third short, Aisha And Nadeem, completed earlier this year, shows her maturity as a director. The story of a British Asian woman whose brother is arrested for suspected terrorism in Afghanistan uses improvisation to subtly explore issues such as British identity, personal freedoms and social isolation. The film was picked up by the Canadian Film Centre for international distribution at this year’s Clermont-Ferrand short film festival.

Kanthan is now on a one-year course at the National Film and Television School, where she has been noted for her commitment, focus and determination in tackling difficult themes in her work. She is developing a feature with producer Marc Boothe of London’s B3 Media, writing a short film for Indian television entitled Troubled Hearts, and developing a feature about the civil war in Sri Lanka.
Contact: kothai.kanthan@redearthfilms.co.uk

Full feature here.