Five years on and the events of 7/7 are still very raw, which is perhaps in part why has it taken a French-Algerian director to make the first film about the London bombings. Rachid Bouchareb's moving portrait of the aftermath of the events was released last week on the anniversary of the terrorist attack that shook the capital.

Shot in 2008 in London and France, the production was beset with difficulties. Lead actor Sotigui Kouyaté was dying and wore an oxygen mask between takes, while lead actress Brenda Blethyn had just a few weeks to learn a whole new language, so could barely communicate with her co-star and the crew who all spoke French. The film, however, which shot on a shoestring budget, has emerged as a triumphant and sensitive love story and received standing ovations at its debut at the Berlin International Film Festival.

"Rachid will be very interesting in London," says London River producer Bertrand Faivre, "but he wants to make sure that people who have actually been through these events in London like the film. It's very important for him. He wants to make sure that they don't feel he's betrayed them. He wants them to feel that the message in the film, which is humanistic, is well received by the people who had to suffer from these events."

Even before the bombings, Bouchareb had imagined making a film about a Muslim and Christian linked by tragedy. An admirer of Mike Leigh, Bouchareb cast Brenda Blethyn as a bereft mother searching for her missing daughter, while African actor Kouyaté was cast as Ousmane, a Muslim father looking for his son. Kouyaté, who sadly passed away in April of this year, was named Best Actor at the Berlin Festival. Together the unlikely pair negotiate their way past the horrors of the day and attempt to discover what happened to their children. The end result is not a film about the bombings, but about humanity.

Bouchareb's previous film, the big-budget war epic Days of Glory (2006), tells the story of Maghrebin soldiers fighting for France in the Second World War and the discrimination they face. "Bouchareb did Days of Glory just before," says Faivre, "it was a big budget long shoot, so he wanted to be free from any strings doing London River. This was a very low budget film with a small crew, shot with a lot of freedom, which I think gives the film a very unique and human flavor which is paramount for this type of story."

Producer Faivre, from independent art house The Bureau, nurtures European talent like Bouchareb, working with, among others, former Film London Microwave Executive Soledad Gatti-Pascual on Unmade Beds, Philippe Lioret on the critically acclaimed French film Welcome and Nicholas Saada on London set thriller Spy(ies). "The UK industry has never been as good as when it has been trying not to be Hollywood. If you think about films of the last 10 years, Slumdog Millionaire, The Constant Gardener, The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void, or even Odd Birds, they are not trying at all to do what Hollywood is doing - they are doing something different, that only the English do well..."

London River is out in cinemas now.