Shoot The Messenger

Sharon Foster won the Dennis Potter Award for screenwriting and her first major film has produced a furore true to the spirit of the chain-smoking doyen of TV writers, as BBC News reports.

The film...opens with the line: "Whenever I think about it, everything bad that has ever happened to me has involved a black person."

Director Ngozi Onwurah told the BBC News website that the film deals with issues prevelant in the black community, "but quite often don't talk about in public".

"Part of the role of a writer is having to look at some of the more uncomfortable things in the world that you know," she said.

David Oyelowo in Shoot The Messenger (Photo: Mike Hogan/BBC)

The film will be shown on 30 August on BBC Two.

"This is one of the most racist, demeaning and misrepresentative films ever broadcast and commissioned by the BBC," said Toyin Agbetu, the founder of Ligali, which seeks to challenge "the misrepresentation of African people in the British media".

"African people in Britain are portrayed as a monolithic, belligerent, aggressive, politically naive and intellectually-diminished," he added.