MAYBE there's a lesson in the danger of stereotypes in all this. Consider. When it came to making a film in Forres the Dutch-Iranian director Kaweh Modiri quickly ran into some preconceptions. "At first some people were convinced we were shooting a porno because we are from Amsterdam," he laughs down the phone.

Whatever his film Bodkin Ras might be it's certainly not that. What it is, though, is difficult to describe. It's a mixture of drama and documentary, a film that plays off what Modiri calls the "cinematic landscape" of the region against the small, very flawed, very human stories to be found in that part of the world (and every other part of the world for that matter).

It's the real-life story of the town's roughest bar and the people who drink there and it's the fictional story of a stranger, played by Dutch-Iranian actor Sohrab Bayat, who is running from his own past and who finds a new home among the drinkers. Fiona Does Forres it most definitely is not.

The idea for the film, which is about to screen at the Glasgow Film Festival, was born in 2006 when Modiri visited a friend in the town. "Straight away I was struck by the town which was so remote, so far away, so hidden between the Highlands and the sea."

At one point he ended up in The Eagle where he met characters who were to inspire him. Characters such as Red James, "a rough-looking Scotsman," according to Modiri. Red James was once a violent man who has served time in many prisons and who has been working on a mysterious manuscript for years. And then there was Eddie Paton, a former fence builder whose life has been blighted by family tragedy.

Soon Modiri was asking them both if they would appear in a film. There was some reluctance. "The boys turned up at the pub and they were strangers and we just got to chatting," recalls Paton from his home in Forres, "and they told me about the film and asked: 'Would I be interested in coming into it?' And I said: 'Not really'."

Thankfully he changed his mind. "I got to know them, you ken. It began as a joke in my eyes, but something came out of it in the end."

"Eddie is just a magnificent character who turned out to be one of the best actors I've ever worked with," suggests Modiri.

Paton's story and performance – not that he calls it that – is easily the most compelling aspect of the film. At times it does threaten to overwhelm the fictional elements. But Modiri believes the film needed both the drama and the documentary elements to work.

"It was in the DNA of the project from the beginning," Modiri argues. "I wanted to have these real characters in the film, but the stranger becomes a projection for their hopes and their desires.

"So that's why I mix it up. Also, I didn't want to portray them purely within a documentary context where we sit down and weep for them."

The temptation is strong though. "With Eddie there was a very strong sense that there was a big tragedy behind him that was very strong and tangible," admits Modiri. "He's gone through a lot. Really horrific things have happened to him and the reason partially why he's in a bar from morning to evening drinking his sorrows away is that in real life he might not have found a way to deal with yet.

"But as soon as the cameras were on, when he was playing himself, he would know very, very accurately where these emotions were coming from and he could work with them."

Paton agrees that the film turned into a form of therapy for him. "It brought a lot of sadness to me," he says of one particularly raw sequence in the film. "But at the same time when I saw it on the big screen it was a release of some sort. That's what I took out of it."

Even when it was clear that Modiri wasn't making a porn movie there were still some reservations about the film in Forres. Some thought it was some kind Borat-style send-up of the town. But that's not what the film does. Rather, it finds a new way to tell familiar stories.

"I'm sure every town in the country has a bar like The Eagle and its where maybe the hardest drinkers go," says Paton, "but that doesn't make them any less people.

"We've all got our own outlooks in life and a lot of crap happens to a lot of people. But it's how you deal with it. There are people out there who are too quick to blame: 'He's just a drunk.' But everybody's got a story to tell and dealing with it is hard to do."

That's the other danger of stereotypes. It can mean that sometimes we forget that we are all damaged in our own way. What does that make us? Human, I guess.

Bodkin Ras is screening at the CCA as part of the Glasgow Film Festival tomorrow at 6.15pm and Saturday at 3.45pm.