dir. Shezad Dawood
2013, UK, 75 mins
Two Chinese youths land in a spaceship outside Preston in the North of England. Their mission: to re-establish contact and effect the retrieval of the ‘Glorious 100’, sent to Earth millennia ago in human form to study and observe the development of another race. After making contact with one of the 100, now a Pakistani shopkeeper, they discover that many of their kind have become corrupted, forgetting their original purpose and slowly becoming influenced by and in turn influencing their adopted home.
The trio is constantly pursued by a threatening hooded bike gang, presided over by Warner, a local immigration officer, who leads a secret society of alien malcontents. Along the way they meet various characters, whose human or alien identities are unclear, while the entire city takes on a strange and unsettling atmosphere. The narrative culminates on the roof of the controversial Brutalist structure of Preston Bus Station, where rival factions face off before setting in motion the extraction of the ‘Glorious 100’. The final sequence sees UFOs hover above Avenham Park (site of the first mass Mormon baptisms) where large crowds of local people are drawn towards the strange lights of the alien arrival, and nothing will ever be the same again.