Wembley-born actor and writer Riz Ahmed's in the news again for his film City of Tiny Lights to be released on Friday. Based in modern-day London, the movie is about a straightforward missing-person case in the teeming, multi-cultural metropolis. The film looks at multi-layers of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.
The multi-layered film encompasses several of these cities-within-cities plots, adapted from Patrick Neate’s 2005 novel, of a story of Tommy Akhtar (played by Ahmed), a private investigator employed to look into a young woman’s disappearance. Akhtar’s investigation drags him into Islamic terrorism, shady property deals and high-end prostitution but also forces him to reconnect with his own past.
In a pre-release interview, he told the press that he is a London boy at heart. He makes it a point to visit his parents once a week and despite all his successes, all that his mother is concerned about is really what he has eaten that day, he jokes.
“Most British cities are a real mix of different kinds of people - I don’t just mean different races, I mean different subcultures, different scenes. You’ve got the back alley, down-and-out world and you’ve got the posh, bottle-service clubs, you know?” he said.
