Independent picks up SUS

Luc Roeg’s production and sales outfit Independent is to handle the UK theatrical release of SUS, the new film based on the award winning play by Barrie Keeffe (A Long Good Friday.)

Independent is planning to release the film in early May, at about the time of the UK General Election.

This is the second film (after David Holroyd’s W.M.D) that Independent has brought to British cinemas. The company, better known as a sales and production outfit, has been branching into distribution since setting up a Rights Management division under Eric Stevens.

SUS, directed by Robert Heath, was produced through Thin Film Productions  in association with Mensch Films and 3rd Eye Films.

Starring Ralph Brown, Clint Dyer and Rafe Spall, the film is a drama based on a true story and exploring institutional racism and police corruption. It is set on the 1979 General Election that brought the Thatcher Government to power. Delroy, an unemployed young black man, is arrested and spends the night in a police interview room where he is brutally interrogated under suspicion of the murder of his wife.

SUS will receive a Gala screening at the East London Film Festivbal later this month in the presence of guests including human rights campaigner Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black British teenager murdered in a notorious suspected racist attack in south-east London in the early 1990s.