written and directed by Rika Ohara, based on a poem by Lord Byron
In Lord Byron's The Giaour (1813), beautiful harem slave Leila is drowned as an adulteress.
Her lover the Giaour ("infidel") kills her master Hassan in revenge and is cursed in punishment.
In the 200 years since its publication, The Giaour spawned a genre of gothic fiction and came to symbolize, via Delacroix's paintings,
the lethal conflict between the East and the West as represented by its two male protagonists: one Muslim, the other, Christian Ð the Giaour, or "the infidel" of the title.
Yet Leila, at the center of this murderous passion, is entirely silent and strangely bloodless Ð until we consider a new reading of the poem that
unlocks her true identity.
Love, blood, karmic retribution Ð the film The Giaour is Byron meets kabuki, in which Leila ceases to be a silent victim of "Oriental" violence
against women, and Hassan emerges as a gay romantic hero.
Music by Jono Podmore | Executive-Produced by Gareth Joness
