--- title: "I Am Slave" year: 2010 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/i-am-slave" fi1m_id: "i-am-slave" imdb_id: "tt1596352" tmdb_id: 45780 wikidata_id: "Q5976071" fi1m_score: 61 critics_reviews: 2 published: "2026-10-07T15:41:14.427590+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T15:41:26.994210+00:00" region: "VN" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # I Am Slave (2010) Directed by Gabriel Range · 1h 22m · Drama, Thriller ## Identity I Am Slave - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/i-am-slave - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** i-am-slave - **IMDb ID:** tt1596352 - **TMDB ID:** 45780 - **Wikidata ID:** Q5976071 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596352/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/45780, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5976071 **Fi1m score: 61** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* She can see the front door from where she scrubs the floor, and that is the whole horror > Gabriel Range’s film about a Sudanese woman kept as a domestic slave in London is lean, well shot and held together by Wunmi Mosaku. It is also so determined to be clear that it leaves us almost nothing to work out for ourselves. ## Synopsis Malia (Wunmi Mosaku) is a young Sudanese woman from the Nuba Mountains who is kept as a domestic slave in London, in the home of Haleema (Lubna Azabal), a woman with children, a nanny and a large house that needs keeping. Malia cooks, cleans and keeps her eyes down, and nobody in the household speaks to her as anything but a pair of hands. Back in Sudan, her father, Bah (Isaach de Bankolé), has not stopped looking for the daughter he lost when she was a child, and he carries his questions from room to room in Khartoum. The film cuts between his search and her captivity. In London, Malia notices Musa (Nonso Anozie), a Sudanese man she encounters outside the house, and the possibility that someone might treat her as a person. ## Review Gabriel Range’s film opens in the Nuba Mountains, where Malia is a child with a father, and it ends in London, where she is a grown woman in somebody else’s house. Between those two places it has 82 minutes, and that is both its discipline and its problem. *I Am Slave*, inspired by the account of Mende Nazer, is spare, handsome and carried by a lead performance of real weight. It is also so anxious to be understood that it explains what it has already shown. It is a decent film about an appalling thing, and we wanted it to be a harder one. Wunmi Mosaku plays Malia as a woman who has learned to take up as little room as possible. She keeps her eyes down, answers in a word, and folds laundry with the care of someone who knows what a crease will cost her. The performance is nearly all in the body: the way she flinches at a raised voice from another room, the way she stands in a London street with a bag of shopping and cannot make her feet go anywhere but back. When she is finally given a line that says what she feels, it is less than her face had already told us. Mosaku is the reason to watch, and the film knows it, and leans on her. Isaach de Bankolé is the second engine, as Bah, the father who refuses to stop looking. His scenes in Khartoum are quiet, mostly a man walking into rooms and asking a question, and de Bankolé plays him with a patience that is close to stubbornness. Brand Thumim cuts between father and daughter so that each strand answers the other: she is told she has no family, and we are shown her family. It is a simple device and it works, though Bah is written as a search rather than a person, and we learn almost nothing about him except that he loves her. Robbie Ryan shoots the two countries as two different films. The Nuba scenes are wide and hot, red earth and white light and children running through it; London is grey, close and seen mostly through glass, so that Malia is forever framed by a window she is on the wrong side of. Cristina Casali designs Haleema’s house as pale carpet and expensive nothing, and that is right: it is not a cellar, it is a comfortable home in which somebody is property. Harry Escott and Molly Nyman’s score stays low, strings mostly, and has the sense not to tell us how to feel when a door closes. The trouble is the script. Jeremy Brock, who wrote *The Last King of Scotland*, builds the mechanism of Malia’s captivity out of a confiscated passport and a threat to her family, states it once, and then expects it to do all the work. It cannot. Lubna Azabal’s Haleema is given cruelty and nothing underneath it, no fear, no need, no history, and Azabal does what she can with a woman who exists to be unkind on cue. Nonso Anozie’s Musa, a Sudanese man Malia meets outside the house, arrives when the plot needs him and says what the plot needs said. Nobody in London is allowed to be more than their function. There is one stretch we will not forget. Haleema gives Malia the day’s orders in the hall, a few feet from the open front door, with the street visible beyond it, and then goes upstairs. Malia looks at the door. We were angry, properly angry, in the way the film intends, and then we were angry at the film for how quickly it cut away, as if afraid we might not have got the point. We had. Range made *Death of a President* in 2006 and was accused of recklessness; here he has gone the other way and is cautious to a fault. *Dirty Pretty Things* found a thriller inside the same London of unseen workers and took the time to make its villains people. *I Am Slave* has the better lead and the worse script, and at 82 minutes it ends just as it has started to earn its second half. See it for Mosaku, who deserves a bigger film and will presumably get one, and for Ryan’s two Sudans. Do not expect it to argue with you; it has made up its mind, and it is right, and that turns out not to be quite enough. *Fi1m score 61, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is I Am Slave worth watching?** *I Am Slave* is worth watching for Wunmi Mosaku's lead performance and Robbie Ryan's photography, though we scored it 61 because the script explains what it has already shown. It suits viewers who want a short, serious drama about modern slavery in London and can forgive a villain written as cruelty with nothing underneath. It runs 82 minutes and ends before it has fully earned its second half. **How long is I Am Slave, and what is it rated?** *I Am Slave* runs 1h 22m. It is a drama and thriller film. **Where can I watch I Am Slave in Vietnam?** *I Am Slave* is not on any streaming or rental service in Vietnam at the moment. It is available in 2 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is I Am Slave, and is it suitable for children?** *I Am Slave* carries no certificate in the details we have, and what it shows is domestic cruelty, threats and fear rather than graphic violence. Malia flinches at raised voices and is kept in line by a confiscated passport and a threat to her family, so the menace is constant but mostly implied. The subject matter makes it a film for older teenagers and adults, not younger children. **What should I watch after I Am Slave?** After *I Am Slave*, try [*12 Years a Slave*](https://film.one/film/12-years-a-slave) (2013, Fi1m 91): Another true story of a free person made property, told with far more time and rigour. Then [*Capernaum*](https://film.one/film/capernaum) (2018, Fi1m 80): A Beirut child with no papers and nowhere to go; messier and angrier than this. ### Reviews we read (2) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, The Associated Press (80/100, inferred): The review finds the film quietly powerful and gripping. It singles out Wunmi Mosaku’s heart-wrenching performance and Robbie Ryan’s striking cinematography for praise. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/i-am-slave-film-review-30095/) - **Variety**, Boyd van Hoeij (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film dramatically simplistic and argues it lacks the nuance its subject demands. The production’s cinematography, design, and score earn praise for contrasting Sudan and London. [Read](https://variety.com/2010/film/reviews/i-am-slave-1117943776/) ## Details - **Director:** Gabriel Range - **Director:** Gabriel Range - **Screenplay:** Jeremy Brock - **Cinematography:** Robbie Ryan - **Editor:** Brand Thumim - **Music:** Molly Nyman, Harry Escott - **Production design:** Cristina Casali - **Producer:** Andrea Calderwood - **Cast:** Wunmi Mosaku as Malia; Isaach de Bankolé as Bah; Lubna Azabal as Haleema; Nyokabi Gethaiga as Hana; Yigal Naor as Said; Nasser Memarzia as Ibrahim; Sirine Saba as Nanny; Farzana Dua Elahe as Arab Shop Assistant - **Runtime:** 1h 22m - **First release (Canada):** 14 September 2010 - **Genres:** Drama, Thriller ## Where to watch in Vietnam Not streaming, renting or buying in Vietnam at the last check. Also available in: GB, IE. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Dirty Pretty Things* (2002): The same unseen London, but with a plot and villains who are people - *Lilya 4-ever* (2002): A Swedish-Russian account of trafficking that refuses every comfort this one allows - *12 Years a Slave* (2013), Fi1m 91: Another true story of a free person made property, told with far more time and rigour — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/12-years-a-slave.md) - *Ghosts* (2006): Nick Broomfield’s reconstruction of the Morecambe Bay cockle pickers, plain and devastating - *Capernaum* (2018), Fi1m 80: A Beirut child with no papers and nowhere to go; messier and angrier than this — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/capernaum.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/i-am-slave