Gambling skyrocketed during the pandemic, and disproportionately affects people from minority backgrounds. Through a series of focus groups and working with the extensive knowledge of our commissioning partners YGAM, Red Card and TalkGen, we gathered our young team together to help develop the plot.

The film was written by one of our members who brought personal and lived experience of knowing people affected by gambling, but also socio-cultural and religious knowledge of the context of a character like Bilal.

With a Muslim director, writer and lead actor (the brilliant Fady Elsayed), as well as through partnering with the London Islamic Cultural Society and Mosque, the representation of Muslim characters on screen was given the utmost care. In a truly unprecedented fashion, the film premiered at this very mosque in a screening that was both poignant, and truly impactful, sparking an intergenerational dialogue between people from all walks of life about a topic that had never been discussed in such a setting.