MISS KEBAB

SYNOPSIS

Ola, nicknamed Ms. Kebab by her students, is a teacher from Poland who lives in Leeds (UK) and works at a school in a poor suburban area. Her students are mostly immigrants, also from Poland and Eastern Europe.

Ola left the Silesia region in Poland to escape the small-town, backwater way of life, as well as her overprotective mother, who keeps calling her, trying to get her to come back home. Ola wants to find her place in the world, find her own voice, and not be trapped in a safe but predictable and somewhat stifling, cozy home life. Working at a school in Leeds is both an opportunity and a challenge. The headmistress, nicknamed HEN (55) due to her appearance and behavior, doubts Ola’s qualifications and criticizes her empathetic approach to students, calling it a weakness.

Christmas is coming. At the morning assembly, the headmistress announces an inspection by the school board and Ola is the one to prepare a demonstration lesson. This is her chance for a permanent contract and a raise. Ola would like to do a performance about the birth of Jesus. However, in a multicultural classroom, some students don’t even know who Jesus was. Ola has to face their maladjustment, aggression, communication difficulties, traumas from dysfunctional families. She only gets support from the biology teacher, RICHARD (38), who good-heartedly helps her out of difficult situations.

A new student , Rosa, a Roma girl from Slovakia, starts attending the school, brought there by strange “uncles”. Rosa is sad and tense, doesn’t talk much, does not answer questions. Does she feel threatened? Ola tries to help her, but Rosa is silent and doesn’t want to talk. The headmistress instructs Ola to follow procedures and rely solely on facts.

During rehearsals, Ola and her students form a bond, as her kindness and empathy help them open up and show their hidden talents. The performance, although somewhat unorthodox, is looking promising, and the students, despite constant difficulties and repeated aggressive behavior, begin to form a community thanks to Ola’s influence.

On the day of the inspection, Rosa does not show up to class. Ola goes to her house, but the family has disappeared. Upon her return to the school, Ola finds out that the headmistress had sent her students to an amusement park, supposedly as a reward for good behavior. Despite the risk of losing her job, Ola confronts the headmistress harshly, accusing her of contempt and disregard for the kids, who had put in a lot of effort into preparing the play and were treated like garbage in return. Ola joins the students in the amusement park. A bond has been formed between her and her pupils. She is on their side now. She promises them that after school they will put on the show they prepared.

DIRECTOR’S VISION

The film talks about serious matters in a comedic tone – the main character uses an extremely sarcastic internal monologue to express her attitude towards the situations she faces. The script of “Miss Kebab” is based on a true story, told in the eponymous book. Written with sensitivity and a sarcastic sense of humor, it describes the difficult, sometimes even absurd, experiences of a Polish woman, a teacher at a school in Leeds, working with children from poor immigrant families. In an ironic tone, it talks about the problems in trying to adapt to living in a different culture, facing financial struggles, and an educational system that fails to integrate students from different cultural backgrounds and underprivileged social strata. The lead character’s life, as well as the kids from unassimilated / pathological backgrounds are portrayed in a light and humorous way, but also with warmth and genuine fondness. The book’s author agreed to work with me on the film script based on her book. The topic of immigration and difficulties in adapting to living in a different culture, as well as the subject of education, especially in the case of students with various cultural backgrounds and from underprivileged families, are amongst the most important problems in the world today. Still, cinema rarely address these issues, with the exception of the French film “The Class” (Entre les murs), awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2008. Moreover, Poles in Great Britain, despite being a very large minority group in the British society, are rarely featured as movie heroes. “Miss Kebab” would be an exception. The personal narrative of both the book and the script, allows for presenting difficult topics from an unobvious perspective, where emotions are mixed with the narrator’s sense of humor, viewing the world with sarcasm and irony, and noticing the absurdities behind many tragic events and situations. I would like to keep that same tone in the film, which is why the main character’s persona would also be made up of her self-mocking, sometimes sarcastic commentary (inner voice). She is part of a world in which she herself is a stranger and not all codes are clear to her. Thus, the elements of reality and fantasy are not clearly separated in the narrative, as the world around her holds a mystery.

On the other hand, in the world of her pupils, the centuries-old cultural messages, like the meaning of Christmas or the story of Jesus’s birth, gain a different meaning and need to be redefined. Some students don’t even know who Jesus was. Kids from poor, often pathological families need support and acceptance, but it is not always easy to understand where they’re coming from.

OLA (33), whom her students nickname Miss Kebab (because her teacher’s assistant’s job doesn’t pay enough, she has a side job at a kebab bar) is a “stranger” herself. She left a small town in the Silesia region in Poland. She wanted to get away from a set way of life in a traditional community – the prospect of rushing into marriage, having a bunch of children and the predictable future of a small town life. She came to the UK to find her own voice, her place in the world, break the shackles of family and community expectations, as well as get away from an overprotective mother trying to tell her how to live her life.

Working at a school in Leeds proves to be a challenge. On the one hand, students from unassimilated, pathological backgrounds, very often carrying deep traumas, on the other – a bureaucratic educational system focused on solid results, filled with guidelines and procedures to be followed and respected by both students and teachers. On top of it all, a demanding, scathing headmistress who questions Ola’s competence and believes a teacher should be strict. Ola thinks the opposite: only empathy and understanding allow you to establish a connection with problematic pupils, whose behavior is most often caused by family trauma. Treating them with interest and kindness allows them to regain their dignity and transcend the vicious circle of exclusion. However, the headmistress does not appreciate Ola’s unusual methods, considering them a manifestation of weakness.

The film is to convey a portrait of the main heroine, describing the world from her point of view. The camera follows her closely in each scene, and every event – funny, disturbing or terrifying – is seen through her eyes. On top of using the inner voice, I would like to present her perspective through scenes mixing reality and visions. In the film narrative both worlds, the real and the imaginary one, should exist next to each other, without distinction (a similar method is used in the film Joker), to better portray the main character and her perception of the world – which at times seems hard to comprehend and mysterious to her.

The school environment where Ola works is also a crucial component.
Students from poor neighborhoods and dysfunctional families bear scars from their pathological family life. They are unruly and rebellious, but behind their masks of ruffians and hooligans hide lost and terrified kids, socially excluded from the start.

The casting of students will be essential. It would be important for me to cast them shortly before the filming starts because teenagers at this age change rapidly.
The poor and rich districts of Leeds are connected by a bus route, which Miss Kebab takes to get to work. We see both luxurious pre-Christmas decorations in shop windows and empty beer cans lying about in poor neighborhoods. Two worlds separated by an invisible but uncrossable line. In the modern world this frontier grows more apparent, but is less and less defined.

Despite the seriousness of the topics brought up in the script, the main character looks at the world with empathy and sense of humor, and that very humor (self-deprecating, sometimes sarcastic) is the dominant tone of the movie. The problem introduced in the script is universal and the film has a potential to reach wider audience (including young people), both in Poland and abroad.

KAMILA CZUL – BIOGRAPHY

She graduated from the British and American Culture and Literature Section at the University of Silesia in 2005. At that time she also received a diploma from the teaching faculty, achieving complete professional qualifications as a teacher. She is also a licensed interpreter of the Public Services, specialized in English law. At the final exam, she achieved one of the best results in the country (5 distinctions in total), and she received two Susan Tolman awards presented by Prince Michael of York.

She is an experienced English teacher, who worked with students in all age groups and from various backgrounds. Since 2008, she has lived and worked in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK.

For the last five years she has been working as an English interpreter and translator, providing services for the Leeds City Council, the Leeds Crown and Municipal Courts, Social Welfare Centres and West Yorkshire Police. She also creates subtitles for movies and series for Netflix and cooperates regularly with a maker of historical documentaries.

zIn 2018, her debut novel, “Miss Kebab”, was published by the Czerwone i Czarne publishing house. The book refers to her personal experiences as a teacher. Michał Witkowski recommended it as follows: “Remember her name. This is a new star entering the literary salons with the combined strength of Michał Witkowski and Dorota Masłowska.” It really was an exceptional debut. The author found her own unique language to describe the life of Polish immigrants in the UK: one mixing the funny and the scary.