David Hughes recounts the strange story of ‘Lies We Tell’ – a Gabriel Byrne-headlined movie which was funded by a mysterious Bradford businessman’s double glazing fortune.
When Lies We Tell appeared in cinemas in UK cinemas in 2017, featuring Gabriel Byrne, Harvey Keitel, Gina McKee and Mark Addy among its cast, it wasn’t the film itself that captured the imagination – it was the story behind it.
The film’s first-time director, Mitu Misra, was an Indian-born, Bradford-based former double-glazing salesman who had built from scratch one of the UK’s largest replacement window firms, Safestyle UK. You might know it: it’s famous for its “ya buy one, ya get one free” TV ads fronted by actor Jeff Brown.
Misra had sold his share of the business in 2013, netting him a £70 million fortune – enough to realise his lifelong dream of making an independent film. A film Misra himself would co-write and direct, with bona fide film stars like Byrne and Keitel wooed to Bradford to work with the unknown filmmaker on the self-styled “northern noir”. The movie told the story of a young Muslim woman, played by Home And Away actor Sibylla Deen. She’s estranged from her gangster husband, whose affair with married millionaire Demi (Keitel) is covered up by his mild-mannered driver, Donald (Byrne), following Demi’s death.
“Lies We Tell is, on the surface, about a man forced to confront an underworld that he has stumbled into,” Misra said in the director’s statement accompanying the film’s BAFTA screening, “but it is also about a strata of British society that lives by its own laws, that really exists. Donald’s story is something I have experienced – an experience I wanted to portray the only way I knew how: through film.”
There was lots to like about the story behind the film: Misra’s anecdotes about sneaking into cinemas while growing up poor in Bradford (“Cinema, be it Bollywood or Hollywood, was my way out,” he told The Guardian); learning to write film scripts by watching Kieslowski and Coen Brothers films on DVD and transcribing them line by line; wooing Gabriel Byrne with detailed arguments about character motivation; fighting with Keitel on the set (“At one point I said, ‘I’m not going to let you fuck up my film!’ I thought he was going to walk. But he didn’t.”) before grudgingly earning the veteran actor’s respect (“After we sorted out our differences, he came right up to me and said, ‘Me and you are friends. We’ve earned it.’”). That, and being such a newcomer to film making that he didn’t know what a boom microphone was for – an admission that led to him being summoned to Byrne’s trailer for a dressing-down.
“Gabriel said, ‘Have you ever been on a set before?’” the director later recalled. “I said no. He said, ‘Why the fuck didn’t you do a course?’ ‘Arrogance,’ I said. That made him laugh.”
Misra liked to claim that his love of film is what saved him, though from what is unclear. “Born in Punjab, India, in 1960, I was brought to England as a child and faced the same problems that other first-generation immigrants had, and continue to face. My only true escape was cinema. I would beg, borrow and steal for a ticket.”
Years later, he said, “I sold my company so I could immerse myself in the works of Polanski, Kieślowski, the Coen Brothers and other greats, and pursue my dream to make a film. I yearned to frame a story, and the passion for Lies We Tell came from personal glimpses into a world that exists within our country, and either people don’t know about it, or rather cannot find the politically correct words to confront.”
Film journalists captivated by Misra’s rags-to-riches, company-director-turned-movie-director, Bollywood-by-way-of-Bradford narrative seemed less interested in the fact that the director of Lies We Tell was a convicted criminal. One who had received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for his part in a mortgage fraud in 1990, from which he was released shortly before the formation of Safestyle UK.
Nor were they interested in the practices of the company itself, which was prosecuted multiple times for putting undue pressure on customers, including, in 2011, the first ever conviction under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act of 2008.
When Lies We Tell was released in early 2018, however, critics were more clear-eyed in their appraisal of the film, with Little White Lies magazine describing it as “actively offensive and hugely boring … laden with hammy tropes and misogynistic theatrics.” Hundreds of prospective screeners were sent out to BAFTA members, heralding Deen’s lead performance, Santosh Sivan’s luminious cinematography, Kieslowski composer Zbigniew Preisner’s melodramatic music, but the hoped-for award nominations never materialised.
Why Hasn’t Gandhi Died Yet?, a drama titled after a remark made by Winston Churchill when Gandhi was on hunger strike
Nor did the remaining slate of films from Bradford’s would-be movie mogul: Mona Lisa, about a road trip across India; Coen-esque caper Johnny Fuckall; and Why Hasn’t Gandhi Died Yet?, a drama titled after a remark made by Winston Churchill when Gandhi was on hunger strike. “Everyone thinks Churchill was a hero,” Misra explained. “He was a racist and that needs to be shown.” Instead, Misra set up a new double-glazing firm, SafeGlaze UK, putting him in direct competition with his former partners in Safestyle UK.
As the newcomer ate up market share, leading to a 27% fall in revenue for the firm Misra founded, Safestyle’s share price plunged. In late 2018, Safestyle boss John Ross – who claimed in court papers that he’d helped Misra get back on his feet after his prison term, and made deals on his behalf when Misra was legally forbidden from doing so himself – sued Misra for £27 million in lost revenue. He alleged, according to The Times, “passing off, the misuse of confidential information, unlawful means conspiracy and malicious falsehood.”
Misra directing his cast
In a surprise twist, Misra won the case, landing Ross with a five-year non-compete order, and an order by Judge John Kimbell to pick up Misra’s legal costs – estimated at £1.8 million. By this time, SafeGlaze UK had gone into administration, and by June of the following year, Ross had declared himself bankrupt. You couldn’t, as they say, make it up.
Or could you? “The passion for Lies We Tell came from personal glimpses into a world that exists within our country,” Misra said at the time of the film’s release, “and either people don’t know about it, or rather cannot find the politically correct words to confront.
What Donald stumbles into is a dark side of society that prevails in the UK today,” he added darkly, “and that the media exposes fleeting and horrific glimpses of, but cannot truly grasp because we are rendered mute in not wanting to offend. Donald ends up with a choice to make about what is right to do, in what is a fictional story – but makes us question what we’re to do about the realities that underpin it.”
