FILMING IN COURT
How Fawziyah’s murder trial was brought to TV
Anna Hall has a long history of making films about domestic abuse and The Push: Murder on the Cliff is her third about a murdered woman.
But the two-part series is her first filming a murder trial.“I’ve made so many films about cases where the door gets slammed [at the trial stage]”, says Hall, who was also executive producer of the Bafta-winning Libby, Are You Home Yet?
In Scotland, broadcasters have been able to apply for permission to film in criminal courts since 1992. But it’s rare to get the green light. The BBC broadcast the appeal of the Lockerbie bomber in 2002. More recently, several series of the BBC documentary Murder Trial have shown trials in Glasgow, Inverness and Aberdeen. But The Push, says Hall, “is the first which has been really contemporaneous”.
Fawziyah Javed’s family were 100 per cent supportive of the request to film Kashif Anwar’s trial for her murder, which was instrumental in securing permission from the Scottish authorities. “If you haven’t got the family on board, it becomes an intrusive process,” Hall says.
Fawziyah’s mother, Yasmin, couldn’t be interviewed before the trial because she was a key prosecution witness. To film the extended family in the court waiting rooms, Hall had to gain their trust, despite having not met them beforehand. “I wanted to be able to film interviews after the pr
