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Penny Woolcock’s street gang drama 1 Day, which follows two gangs around the streets of Handsworth became the centre of a storm when local cinemas claimed police had advised them not to show the film.

West Midlands Police Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport appeared on local television to criticise the film, which received £65,000 distribution funding from the UK Film Council, for ‘glamorising violence’ prompting claims from Woolcock that Davenport had appeared to approve the film at a special screening a few weeks earlier.   The Assistant Police Constable said on TV, ‘My starting-point is that it's fiction, but I think you do see some glamorisation of gang-related behaviour. The main character walks off with £100,000, leaving behind a carnage of dead bodies. It's like a shoot-out at the OK Corral.’

Ms Davenport’s comments came as cinemas across Birmingham chose not to screen the film.   While the Odeon chain said it would be showing the film in 10 cinemas across Britain, it confirmed that it would not be showing the film in the city itself.   Cineworld also declined to show the film in Birmingham, despite planning 20 showings across the country, although Vue, after initially deciding not to show the film, had an apparent change of heart after consultation.

 The manager of the city’s Odeon Cinema claimed he had decided not to screen the film after receiving a visit from a uniformed police constable who advised against showing it.  West Midlands Police Force said the constable had taken it upon himself to issue the advice to the manager and was ‘mortified’ by the consequences when multiplexes across the city began cancelling plans to show the film.

 Dismissing claims that the police had tried to ban the film, Ms Davenport admitted that they had tried to have its rating raised from a 15 to an 18 certificate, but that their request had been denied.

In response to accusations that her film glamorised violence, Penny Woolcock said, ‘The film is trying to show that these people have ordinary lives, and trying to understand it from their point of view. It does not have a glamorising message, but it does show how attractive this world can be… In one scene, a character says 'everybody knows that crime does pay'. But there are many scenes showing the consequences of this life. It's an insight into this world’

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