Rocks

This film is fantastic. It's reminiscent of early Andrea Arnold and I couldn't help thinking of Fishtank when watching this film. However I think this might be better.

The authenticity of the story is unmatched, with incredible performances from Rocks and her brother, accompanied with beautifully composed images and a fitting score to match.

The film will make you consider the difficulties that we experience as young people growing up in the 21st century and very subtly nods to the different experiences young people have while growing up, depending on their socio-economic background. The story is so heartbreakingly real and so human, that it hits so hard and will leave you with a tear in your eye.

ROCKS.

This film directed by Sarah Gavron realistically captures a completely different London to which you usually see. A youthful London, not seen through the lens of gang violence, or an other-worldly bright posh feel, but one simply about sisterhood.

Girlhood is a good film to compare it to, or Divines, but this feels wholly new. The gritty feel to London is captured viscerally and it's nice seeing different characters which are not usually represented on screen.

The director feels removed in the best way, but the vision always felt tightly held. The performances feel like real people with their improv-type dialogue.

You can sense the collaboration and the naturalism bleeds through easily, due to the workshops the actors had partaken in beforehand, making for the hang out moment's and atmosphere feel effortlessly lived in.

The performances were great due to an impressive ensemble and there was an authenticity not just from the main youthful cast, but all the outsiders 'Rocks' encounters in her story.

Bukky Bakray's central performance as 'Rocks' is simply extremely powerful. She does a great job of showing her emotional frailties' as well as transitioning into a sense of maturity by placing it onto her little brother played by D'angelou Osei Kissiedu, who does a terrific job, portraying innocence and flair as well as being comic relief straight from the beginning.

Rocks' hardened experience and the unfair burden placed on her leads to a harrowing innocence to experience by her mother disappearing, which is not explicitly justified in the beginning as to why, perhaps to show it from Rock's oblivious, innocent perspective.

Also, an underrated aspect is this film handles the contemporary age of phones and social media everywhere well and incorporate it into the visual storytelling.

Many directors feel they have to make period pieces as they have stated they don't know how to get past the smartphone barrier, and Rocks has arguably overcome this successfully.

However, this can cause abrupt edits and loses the fluidity and pacing of some scenes.

It can also lead to a contrast when deciding if it is a exciting scene as opposed to the more somber, contemplative, realistic feel the film is aiming to capture and balance, but I applaud the effort.

The tone is also all over the place, conceivably representing her life and predicament, however there may be too much tether given.

The cinematography by Hélène Louvart, who also shot Never Rarely Sometimes Always recently, places us into Rocks perspective with ease and is extremely detailed whilst creating an intimate drama in which Rocks is almost in every frame.

The film is written by Nigerian-British playwright/screenwriter Theresa Ikoko along with film and TV writer Claire Wilson in which they combine tragedy and humour with a thread of looseness which is inevitably down to the collaboration and preparation of this film.

The ending for some feels incomplete for some, but without spoiling anything, there was definitely a realisation and conclusion to this intense story - a minor key ending.

Overall Gavron, and her predominantly female crew, have made a film with its heart in the right place and it will surely be one of the best films this year. Vital cinema.

Another outstanding piece of contemporary British film, as a teenage schoolgirl finds herself alone and left responsible for her younger brother. Soul destroying in so many ways, performances as good as any you'll find, a depiction of a world we'd like to ignore but, unfortunately, reinforcing a theme whose variations are common and increasingly so.

At the beginning of 'Rocks', the audience sees the images in a vertical rectangular frame, as if they were filmed with a smartphone. For a second, I feared this was going to be the case during the whole film. Fortunately, it is a gimmick that's repeated only now and then for a few seconds. In fact, it is quite a nice and appropriate feature, because the film is about teenage girls. As teenage girls do, they film each other with their smartphones. The images add to the authenticity of this film, which does a very good job by showing the girls' lives as real as can be. Rocks, as everyone calls her, is a normal and happy girl, living in a multicultural working class part of London. But her life is turned upside down when one day her mother dissapears, leaving only a note and some money, telling Rocks she 'needs time to clear her head'. From then on, Rocks has to take care of herself and her little brother. She doesn't tell anyone about her mother's dissapearance, fearing the authorities, but her situation gets more and more difficult. The young actresses are phenomenal. This is as close as you can get to a fly-on-the-wall account of modern teenage life. During the film, friendships develop, as well as mutual aversions. Rocks tests the loyalty of her friends to the limit. Apart from being a portrait of a young girl in difficult circumstances, it is also a tribute to female power and loyalty. Apart from Rocks's little brother and some school teachers, there are almost no male characters in the film. At times, the film reminded me of 'Entre les murs', the French movie about a difficult school class. At other times, it reminded me of 'Nobody knows', the Japanese movie of children left behind by their mother. Anyone who enjoyed these films, wil enjoy this one too.

This film is like every great film - multi-faceted, which means it has resonance that is almost universal. It's about a black girl. It's multi-racial. It's about children born of recent immigrant families. It's about coming of age. It's about being a girl. It's about mental health with limited support for families affected. It's about a brother and sister. It's about working classes. It's urban. It's London. It's Hackney. It's amazing and the story of Rocks and Emmanuel made me cry.

I chose the girl's story for personal resonance because girls on the verge of adulthood with talents, ambitions and dreams fire the film.

Rocks is British. Her grandma is Nigerian. Her mother troubled. She has a younger brother who loves dinosaurs and who has the lines that are the emotional heart of the film. "Close your eyes and think of everything that makes you happy. Keep breathing in and out." He says this when his sister and him are displaced to a grubby hotel as she tries to keep them together in their mother's absence and with Social Services looking to find them.

Before her mum leaves Rocks was able to live as a normal teenager with a group of friends I loved and envied. After her mum leaves the friendships are challenged and the challenges are coming of age, as maturity replaces innocence.

I have no more of the story to relate because it is the characterisation and superb acting that brings everything alive. Just has to be seen.