A white English woman living in Dover, Mary converted to Islam decades earlier when she married her cross-Channel ferry driver husband, Ahmed (Nasser Memarzia), who she courted in secret when they were teenagers.
Mary dresses modestly and wears a hijab. She speaks fluent Urdu, expertly cooks Pakistani food and has woven herself into the fabric of Ahmed’s family. But, after her husband’s sudden death, she makes the disastrous discovery that he has been concealing a separate, secret life across the sea in Calais, where he has a son with his French girlfriend Geneviève (Nathalie Richard).
Scanlan, who beat Hollywood favourites Lady Gaga in House Of Gucci, Alana Haim in Licorice Pizza and Tessa Thompson in Passing, to win Best Leading Actress at the Baftas 2022, exquisitely portrays Mary’s morphing emotions from grief to painful humiliation as her life and identity are called into question.