I was walking out of the cinema last week, having just experienced Children of Men (written by Hawk Ostby, Mark Fergus, David Arata and Timothy J Sexton... oh and Alfonso Cuaron is down as a writer but he probably just requested a few changes and made the real writers do the work).

My cinemate and I got to talking. First off, is it a British movie? It's set in Britain, it's about Britain and most of the talent in it is British, but it's got that Universal logo at the start and the director's Mexican.

We agreed that we liked the movie and thought it pretty damned good, but suddenly my mate says `But is it a really good British movie or a pretty good American movie?'

So many questions popped up in my head simultaneously that I didn't have an answer for him.

Do we in Britain make allowances for our films and judge them on a totally different set of criteria to films from other countries (like our academically challenged kids who don't come top of the class but try their best)?

Are we accepting mediocrity that we wouldn't accept from other film industries?

Or do we do the opposite - never give a Brit film an even break because it's not as glamorous as an American film or doesn't have subtitles and therefore cannot be meaningful or arty?

And what do American screenwriters think of our movies? Do you even consider our film industry a viable outlet for your talents?