Gas Attack

The entirely fictional screenplay by Rowan Joffe (who wrote The Last Resort, screened at last year’s festival) became gruesomely topical when a Kurdish asylum seeker was murdered in Glasgow last year. It only became really bizarre when details of the anthrax attacks in the US emerged. After an intensive search, Glenaan found a cast made up almost entirely of amateurs. The nightmare scenario was filmed in documentary style on DV, occasionally using images from security cameras. The result is a realistic and oppressive film.Inhabitants of a block of flats in a poor area of Glasgow fall ill with a mysterious disease. The doctors face a puzzle. Is it influenza, tuberculosis, or something else? Thanks to intensive research by a social worker, they find out the terrible truth: that the illnesses are being caused by anthrax. Great fear reins among the inhabitants, many of them Kurdish asylum seekers. The government reacts slowly and reticently, even when it becomes clear that an extreme rightwing group has deliberately spread the bacteria in the flats.Gas Attack poses important questions about frighteningly relevant questions such as attacks with biochemical weapons and racism, but also challenges the attitude of the government, with the drastic quarantine and culling measures taken during the foot and mouth crisis as a parallel.