The English-language debut of Dutch director Sacha Polak, Dirty God follows a young London mother, Jade (newcomer Vicky Knight), as she tries to reassemble her life after an acid attack leads to disfigurement and burns across her face and upper body – the unprovoked assault coming courtesy of her ex-boyfriend and father of her child. The injuries change the ways in which many people interact with her, altering her sense of self, driving her to pursue cheap plastic surgery in Morocco and fracturing her relationships with her mother, Lisa (Katherine Kelly), and infant daughter.

With co-writer Susie Farrell, Polak eschews common on-screen treatments of burn survivors, avoiding making Jade an object of pity and passivity but also not placing her on a pedestal. She is a complicated, well-rounded character who makes impulsive, sometimes disastrous decisions. Dirty God is a complex story of survival, not victimhood. Her trauma is not easy to boil down: there’s relatively little soul-searching or self-pity, and she has recurring sex dreams about her attacker…

Full interview for the BFI