‘Polite Society’ And ‘We Are Lady Parts’ Center Joyful Muslim Women

To read about the other Culture Shifters, return to the list here.

It’s hard not to feel pure joy and delight when talking with writer-director Nida Manzoor and listening to her describe everything from her childhood film and TV influences to all the big ideas she’s cooking up for the future.

Joy and delight are certainly at the center of her two biggest projects so far: “We Are Lady Parts,” her buoyant Peacock comedy series about a group of young Muslim women who form a punk band — and now, her debut feature film “Polite Society,” which premieres in theaters on April 28.

In the film, protagonist Ria (Priya Kansara) is a British Pakistani teen aspiring to be a stunt performer in movies. Her parents are about to marry off her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) to, as Ria describes him, “a rich Mr. Darcy wanker.” To try to stop the wedding, Ria and her friends stage a heist. As that description suggests, “Polite Society” is a fun, bold and inventive blend of genres: everything from action to modern-day Jane Austen to coming-of-age, and much, much more.

Manzoor’s assured feature directorial debut feels like the kind of movie only she could make. It’s also the culmination of her years of writing and directing in TV, across many different genres, from small, intimate comedies to the legendary BBC sci-fi series “Doctor Who.” In fact, Manzoor, 33, wrote the first draft of “Polite Society” more than a decade ago, when she was first trying to break into filmmaking in her early 20s. But as she soon discovered, at that time, “nobody wanted to make a crazy genre film with a bunch of South Asians in it,” especially from a newcomer.

“I suppose I didn’t see how my film would ever exist, in a way, because I thought: to do a fun action comedy, it’d have to star, like, Ryan Reynolds,” she said. “It couldn’t have a South Asian teenage girl. I was like, ‘Maybe these two things can’t come together.’”