Damien O'Donnell is on his bike, pedalling furiously toward a lunch-time meeting with Fine Line, as he fields questions on his mobile about how he came to make his debut feature, East Is East.

The Dublin-based film-maker, who cut his teeth making pop promos, landed the assignment on the back of an award-winning short, 35 ASide, a comedy about kids in school. And he freely admits (as he swerves between cars) that he was an unlikely choice to direct an adaptation of Ayub Khan Din's award-winning stage play about the experiences of an Asian family in Salford in the early 1970s. "I was enthusiastic about it because it had a different spin on things," he explains. "It engaged me, I guess, even though I hadn't a clue about Pakistani culture."

East Is East was developed by the BBC, but when the company ran into difficulties when raising the finance, Film Four (usually the Beeb's inveterate rivals) stepped in. The film charts the experiences of the Khan family. Chip shop manager George (Om Puri), nicknamed Genghis, is determined to bring up the kids as respectable Muslims, but his Lancashire-born wife (Linda Bassett) wants them to be happy, whether or not that means missing mosque.

Although East Is East is largely based on Ayub Khan-Din's experiences growing up in the north of England in the late 1960s/early 1970s, don't expect any false nostalgia for flares, sideburns and glam rock. "There was nothing about the period that appealed to me," says O'Donnell. "There have been a slew of 1970s films, most of which I haven't liked much."

Besides, he feels the story shouldn't be seen as a museum piece. "Events which happened in the film are still happening today," he says. "When we were casting, a lot of our Asian actors told me that things like this still go on."

And although it deals with so-called 'minority' issues, O'Donnell found Khan-Din's play surprisingly universal. "I was struck by how widespread an experience this was, how pertinent today, when so many people are forced to move to find a better life," he says. "It's a film about family tradition versus progress, about the values of the old versus those of the young - and those are themes I think everyone can relate to." Geoffrey Macnab