If you didn’t see his break-out role in one of the century’s best comedies, Four Lions, then we imagine Riz Ahmed first landed on your radar as the doomed assistant to Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. Along with his high-profile performances in The Night Of, Rogue One, and Jason Bourne this year, one of the two TIFF films he has is the starring vehicle City of Tiny Lights, as noted in our fall festival preview.
Directed by Dredd‘s Pete Travis, it follows Ahmed as a London detective who gets entangled in a missing-girl case as a complex web of lies bubble up. We now have the first clip thanks to THR, which shows Ahmed on the case as he visits his ex-girlfriend at a local bar. Check out the clip below for the film also starring Cush Jumbo, James Floyd, Billie Piper, and Roshan Seth.
TIFF Synopsis:
Later this year, Riz Ahmed will appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and everything will change, for both him and us. For now, those of us who admired him in The Road to Guantanamo, Trishna, Ill Manors, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Nightcrawler — all of which played at the Festival — can celebrate his new lead performance in Pete Travis’ City of Tiny Lights. Ahmed can also been seen at the Festival in a supporting role in Una.
Tommy Akhtar (Ahmed) is a down-at-the-heels London detective who always seems to have one too many problems on his plate. One day Melody (Cush Jumbo) walks into his office, like a classic femme fatale. Her friend Natasha has gone missing. Can Tommy help? Should he?
“I deal in the lies people tell and the truths they don’t,” Tommy says in the hard-boiled narration. As he scours London’s streets for Natasha, he’s drawn into a complex web. It begins with intimate betrayals but extends to scandals fairly ripped from today’s headlines. And as he tries to solve the mystery in front of him, other secrets open up — ones surrounding a tragic accident buried deep in his past.
Screenwriter Patrick Neate, adapting his own novel, gives Ahmed a rich, layered character to work with. And director Pete Travis (Omagh, Dredd) peppers the story with clever references to film noir, making City of Tiny Lights a savvy and stylish plunge into London’s demimonde.
City of Lights premieres on September 12th at TIFF.