The Selfish Giant

Clio Barnard’s second film in the Festival The Selfish Giant  gripped its audience from the very first frames. Two friends Arbor and Swifty emerge from the bleak background of Bradford badlands to confront their meagre existence as poor kids in a deprived area. Between them they conclude there is only one way to make money: they scrounge the area for scrap and sell it on to the rough and ready dealer, ironically named Kitten. In no time canny Arbor the savviest of the two, works out the real money is to be made from copper wiring.  With this knowledge the lads’ relentless story starts them off in a desperate dangerous path in illicit territory. This cannot be a Coming of Age film , the boys at 12 and 13 years old have scarcely begun on any life beyond school exclusion and domestic struggle. It is bolder than that. Clio Barnard has the clear-eyed empathy to create a heartfelt understanding of these not- quite- children in a landscape  devoid of chances to do better than survive. With brilliant cinematography it is a superb film .

At its core is the Director’s unerring insistence on the truth these children cast on the society of unfairness we have allowed to flourish in the past few decades, and its inevitable impact on young lives,

An unforgettable disturbing film full of tenderness and brutal reality, it will endure to join Clio Barnard’s award-winning portfolio of memorable films. Her work continues to attract the acclaim it deserves,

As in I see Buildings Fall like Lightning - there is solace in the film’s ending that enhances this artist’s sensitive treatment of her young protagonists.

 As for the Selfish Giant in Oscar Wilde’s story, he is there all right - on a slow realisation of his own adult errors, but so subtly it only emerges in time.