directors statement By the late 1990s the war in Kosovo had almost come to an end with the Nato bombing of Croatia and many people were fleeing the carnage. Sangatte in northern France became famous for refugees trying to smuggle themselves into the UK. And many of those that made it worked as cheap black market labour on building sites and supermarkets. Britain itself was still coming out of a bad recession and unemployment was high. In late 1999 I was in a clothing store in Newcastle, my home town, in front of me in the checkout queue were two eastern European women, I could hear them talking in broken English to the checkout girl. They were trying to explain that they had clothing coupons from the British government and they were using them to get some warm coats as the weather was cold. It took some time for the checkout girl to understand because she had never seen clothing coupons before and some of the shoppers behind me began to get impatient. One of them, noticing the free coupons, said in a loud and jealous tone I wish I was Kosovan . I was taken aback by the comment, it showed a total lack of understanding of the underlying situation and what these refugees had possibly been through to escape the war in Kosovo and all they wanted was some warm winter coats. In my mind I wanted to explain as strongly as possible to the shoppers in the queue but in reality I didnt, I reacted as most people do and unfortunately kept a polite silence. But the injustice of the comment stayed with me and eventually became the inspiration to write A small piece of bigness. The film is set in the 90s and living in times of economic uncertainty my protagonists, Bott and Sandy, have their own problems. They have lost their jobs and are virtually homeless, as far as they are concerned they are at the bottom. Like the shoppers in the queue they see Kosovan refugees getting something for free, not realising their horrific backstory, and so set out to get something for free themselves by pretending to be Kosovan but through the dramatic twists and turns in the script they discover that there is always someone worse off than yourself. Bott and Sandy end up accidentally being deported to war torn Kosovo and directly experience the refugees horrific problems, problems much bigger than they could have ever imagined . They become educated. Education has the power to defuse prejudice and replace it with acceptance. I hope this is a film about acceptance. Everyone deserves their small piece of happiness. Bott and Sandy get theirs they fall in love. Rob Spence Writer/director/producer
script development The initial script idea won a bursary from Northern Film and Media / UK FILM COUNCIL for development costs as a treatment with recommendations from Stephen Cleary of Arista development in London. He spotted that the idea had potential as a script. This was followed by full funding for script development, again by NFM / UK FILM COUNCIL. Structure mentoring meetings were held in the Arista office in London by Stephen Cleary and the script was mostly written in a snow bound farm in Yorkshire !