Friendship's Death is a strange film – for instance, most films with themes of terrorism take in the chaotic violence and the gut-wrenching effect on innocent victims that terrorism has, but this is the complete antithesis. Instead, the film is confined to a single hotel room and is essentially a dialogue between the two characters – for the most part it could be a play. (Clearly, the arts funding that the film has been made under was not enough to extend to any wider depiction of the scenario).

The script is thoughtful and oddly affecting, full of quaintly amusing little challenges to everyday assumptions – Tilda Swinton’s love of stubble, her observations on the absurdity of a football game. There are some charmingly tongue-in-cheek pleas, like when she argues that Bill Paterson’s typewriter is part of a subjugated slave race, or how the big toe led to the oppression of women, where the film is clearly not taking itself entirely seriously. Photographer Witold Stock shoots to capture Tilda Swinton’s pale porcelain beauty. Balanced out against the wryly, cynical Bill Paterson, she gives an appealing performance.

It was here that Tilda Swinton had her first starring role and went onto find fame in a number of independent productions, before attaining mainstream success and being nominated for an Academy Award in the 00s. Director Peter Wollen is a documentary filmmaker, film critic, lecturer and essayist on the Middle East and spent some living in Amman where the film is set. Friendship's Death has been his last film to date.