Either by accident or cunning design, the 19th Bradford International Film Festival opens with a new film by UK director Michael Winterbottom and closes with a film starring Riz Ahmed, whose first role was in Winterbottom’s 2006 film The Road To Guantanamo.

If The Look Of Love, which is being screened on April 11, is half as good as The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which ends the festival on April 21, it will be worth watching.

Which is to say if Steve Coogan as Soho porn king Paul Raymond is half as good as Riz Ahmed as Wall Street whizz kid-cum radical Lahore University professor Changez Khan, the film festival will start and end memorably.

I watched Indian director Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist twice over Easter and went back over parts of the film twice more. For me, her film was the highlight of the holiday.

Set in New York, Lahore, Manilla and Istanbul, the screen story reshapes aspects of Mohsin Hamid’s international best-selling novel about identity in the post-9/11 world of America’s war on terror.

Riz said: “I think we preserve the spirit and ambiguity of the book. We were lucky to have Hamid adapt the book and do a first draft. It was a painstaking and thorough process.

“It’s a romantic coming-of-age story while being a political thriller and saying something about the world of high finance. It’s denser than anything I have done before and was a massive challenge acting-wise, developing a character ten years apart, two different head spaces.

“I remember filling two notebooks, back to front and front to back: Changez in 2001 and Changez before 2001. Rather than allowing world events to propel him forward, Changez has to find his own truth. A difficult thing to do.”

The film opens with a gathering in Lahore in 2001 at the house of Changez Khan’s father, a poet played by Om Puri. While the party is going on, an American professor from Lahore University, a suspect CIA operative, is kidnapped by Pakistani mujahideen or jihadists.

A student friend of Changez takes a photo on his phone of men searching the professor’s rooms in the university. One of the men turns out to be Bobby Lincoln, an American journalist and author.

It is to Bobby that Changez tells the story of his life either side of the attack on the World Trade Centre, beginning with the words: “Looks can be deceiving”.

And indeed in this beautifully-conceived drama, things are not what they seem, including Changez’s role in the kidnapping and his love affair with rich American girl Erica, a neurotic character played by Kate Hudson.

Changez’s ultimate moment of truth comes in Istanbul where he goes with his boss Jim Cross, played by Keifer Sutherland, to shut down a loss-making publisher of poetry and stories.

“You should be ashamed of what you are about to do,” says the publisher. “How would you evaluate me?”

Later, he gives Changez a copy of a book of his father’s poems and he makes his life-changing decision to abandon the good life in America and, of necessity, return to Lahore.

Mira Nair’s low-budget film couldn’t afford the insurance cost of filming in Lahore, so scenes set in the Pakistani city were actually shot in Dehli in India. Similarly, Atlanta doubled for some of the scenes in New York, and Istanbul doubled for Manilla.

Riz Ahmed, who will be attending the New York premiere of The Reluctant Fundamentalist when it is screened in Bradford, does not believe reaction to the film will be unfavourable in America or anywhere else.

“If two people go together to see it, hopefully they will have different takes on it. People will want to talk about the film. It debunks assumptions.

“One of the hopes I have is that it will start a dialogue, get people talking, that’s something we need everywhere.”

My two viewings gave me a better understanding of what was going on, but almost right away I loved American composer Michael Andrews’s score.

l The Reluctant Fundamentalist is on at the National Media Museum on Sunday, April 21, starting at 8pm. The box office number is 0844 8563797.