A mixedup adolescent living with his disturbed white mother and little sister in London’s East End tries to tear away his Asian side and fit in with the racist thugs around him. Yousaf Ali Khan’s impressive debut is a complex, often overwhelming and highly personal film that is hugely evocative of a troubled time when childhood is already tainted but the future looks impossible.
Also in this combined programme
-
Billy’s Wake
Film elegy resonates with the distortions of memory, guilt and lost time, full of longing for the kind of youthful exuberance that can bubble over… -
Mama, Look
Competing with her mother’s boyfriend and their new baby for attention, a neglected seven-year-old girl slips into violence. -
About a Girl
A burbling stream of conscientiousness by a working-class teenager (the superb Ashley Thewlis) recounts scenes from her life in the North of England. -
Camouflage
Mixed animation and live-action techniques tell the stories of kids with a schizophrenic parent. -
Home Road Movies
About a shy and clumsy father, who thinks that a family car will turn him into a better parent. -
Field
An elegant, abstracted expression of provincial life in which ordinary everyday details become frozen and magnified.
Film details
- Country of production
- United Kingdom
- Year
- 2001
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2002
- Length
- 13'
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
