Peter Mullan on Homelessness and Brotherhood

Peter Mullan, the star of the upcoming film Hector, passionately talks about how homelessness is now becoming an incurable sickness spanning geopolitical boundaries. In a very emotional interview with the Big Issue, Mullan expresses his discontent with this ever-present social problem. The actor also mentions why whole families are getting uprooted from their homes.

He points out foodbanks, and how its proliferation in a wealthy country such as Britain is simply unacceptable.

“But we will be soon seeing more and more kids and families out on the street. We have this horrendous housing crisis. We’re back in a Cathy Come Home situation where whole families are being evicted because of benefit cuts and sanctions.”

Hector was made with a lot of help coming from The Big Issue, and the people behind the publication were very happy with the end result – and that the film is instrumental in shedding more light on the lives of people such as Hector.

Mullan knows a great deal about the homeless, and speaks with so much thoughtful compassion about them. He recounts the cold nights shooting the film, which made it clear why the film is very important.

“We were in our sleeping bags, and it was really cold, but we were acting it and then going back to a nice hotel. The four guys around the corner were staying there all fu****g night. It was brutal.”

In 2005, Mullan actively participated in protests against raids conducted on asylum seekers, which he sees as no different to the homelessness issue.

“To be a refugee on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean – that is the ultimate form of homelessness, with 500 of you on a boat built for 50. Yet you get scumbags like Katie Hopkins describing them as cockroaches. How that woman can be allowed any kind of platform is beyond me,” he says, his voice rising again.

He laments that these refugees were seeking asylum because of us moving into their lands. What is even more inhumane is that the government rescues these Libyan and Iraqi refugees by taking them back to their boats and sending them off elsewhere.

Mullan draws from eerily similar childhood experiences when he was forced to head back to an unsafe place due to a lack of refuge.

“I remember it from when I was a kid. My mother trying to find somewhere to take me, my mentally handicapped brother, my wee brother and my wee sister. But we’d have to take the long walk back to the house where my father was in the process of wrecking the damn place. We would find a little room, barricade ourselves into it. We were going back to utter madness.”

Aimimage is proud to have been part of this socially relevant film as the official provider of professional camera systems and lighting equipment.