Sabrina Elba & Ashley Thomas To Star In Rom-Com ‘Not Like Us’ From Ramla Ali And Richard A. Moore
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- Ramla Ali and Richard A. Moore wrapped production in East London on "Not Like Us," their debut feature as writer-directors, starring Sabrina Elba and Ashley Thomas
- Sabrina Elba plays Amina Hassan, a forty-something Somali pharmacist and single mother whose controlled life is upended by Ashley Thomas's Edmund Clarke, a Jamaican man she falls for against family and cultural expectations
- Three "community aunties" — Hawa, Safia, and Maryam — complicate the romance, with the synopsis framing the film as told "entirely from within the community it depicts"
- Ali and Moore married in 2016, Moore (a white British man) converted to Islam, and Ali was born in Mogadishu and raised in East London — a direct personal connection the producers cite for the material
- Ali is also a former Olympic boxer whose life will be chronicled in the biopic "In The Shadows," releasing in UK cinemas in October
- The film was independently financed after the duo described "difficulties working within the traditional British funding infrastructure"
- Produced by Pangaea Group's Sunita Mirchandani Hyams and Luke Hyams alongside 22 Summers' Andrew Conrad and Gina Carter, with Richard Fearn of Affine Films as executive producer; the team is targeting a 2027 launch
Why it matters: A husband-and-wife team with lived connection to the cross-cultural romance — Moore converted to Islam after marrying Somali-born Ali — had to self-finance their debut after flagging structural barriers in British film funding, making the 2027-targeted "Not Like Us" both a personal story and a quiet indictment of who traditional gatekeepers back.
