My Brother the Devil

Nuances of faith, politics and sexual identity enrich what initially presents as a classic good son-bad son tale.

An energetic and imaginative tale of siblings at a criminal crossroads and a street movie that is imaginatively, even poetically, shot, the pic nonetheless remains rooted in the turmoil of an immigrant British demimonde.

What distinguishes My Brother The Devil is El Hosaini’s maturity in avoiding faux-doc grittiness, political grandstanding or flashy glorification in favour of an intimate, closely observed character piece.

It’s far superior to what usually comes out of the British slums in the genre of gangland thrillers.

Director Sally El Hosaini, who also wrote the screenplay, proves better at introducing dilemmas for her characters than at resolving them.

With My Brother the Devil, writer-director Sally El Hosaini tells a story both operatic in its implications and quotidian in its sensory, day-to-day details.

Even those who aren’t well-versed in the-’hood-always-wins dramas can see what’s coming. So it’s to newcomer Sally El Hosaini’s credit that she embeds a tangible, lived-in sense of the region’s diaspora community and urban criminal underbelly (wagwan, near-indecipherable East End patois!) that’s leagues away from anthropological fetishizing.