With: Conner Chapman (Arbor), Shaun Thomas (Swifty), Sean Gilder (Kitten), Rebecca Manley (Shelly Fenton), Siobhan Finneran (Mrs Swift), Steve Evets (Price Drop Swift), Lorraine Ashbourne (Mary), Rhys McCoy (Daniel)
Director: Clio Barnard
Producer: Tracy O’Riordan
Production co: Moonspun Films
Screenplay: Clio Barnard. Inspired by the short story by Oscar Wilde
Photography: Mike Eley
Editor: Nick Fenton
Music: Harry Escott
REVIEWS

The notable British film at Cannes 2013 was the fiction debut of Bradford filmmaker Clio Barnard, who first came to attention with The Arbor, her unforgettable documentary about playwright Andrea Dunbar.  This contemporary fable about the friendship of two 13-year-old boys of strikingly different temperaments falling under the influence of a scrap metal dealer who runs gypsy horse races on the side is partially modelled on Oscar Wilde’s story of the same name.  Exciting, tough and superbly acted by a mix of non-professional and recognisable character actors, this is a bracing dispatch from the bottom of the heap, in an inimitably British tradition of heightened realism.

“So hauntingly perfect is Barnard’s film, and so skin-pricklingly alive does it make you feel to watch it, that at first you can hardly believe the sum of what you have seen: the astonishingly strong performances from her two young, untutored leads; Barnard’s layered script; Mike Eley’s snow-crisp cinematography that makes the streets of Bradford shine…  Like Ken Loach’s Kes, the film knells with myth: we get a keen sense of an older, purer England buried somewhere underneath all this junk, from the early wide shots of horses in meadows, idling belly-deep in morning mist, to the extraordinary, almost wordless final sequence that hints at redemption and reincarnation.”

— Robbie Collin, Telegraph
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Hamilton
Nb. Screening postponed
To be rescheduled, date TBC

Tauranga
Wednesday, 25 April, 6:15pm

Carterton
Friday, 4 May, 7:30pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 5 June, 8:15pm

Nelson
Thursday, 14 June, 6:00pm

Waitati
Tuesday, 26 June, 8:00pm

Canterbury
Monday, 8 October, 7:30pm

Palmerston North
Monday, 15 October, 6:00pm

Wellington
Monday, 12 November, 6:15pm

New Plymouth
Wednesday, 5 December, 6:00pm
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