Saturday, July 27 | 5:30 pm
Sunday, July 28 | 5:30 pm
In his strikingly original directorial debut—which earned the Locarno Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize—photographer Richard Billingham returns to the squalid council flat outside of Birmingham, England where he and his brother were raised by troubled parents, Ray and Liz. Beautifully composed and laced with an unsettling humor, three episodes unfold as a powerful evocation of the experience of growing up in a Black Country council flat.
In 1990, alcohol makes Richard’s father Ray a prisoner in his own bedroom. Ray’s estranged wife Liz and neighbor Sid battle for control of Ray, who remains hopeful that Liz will return to him if he manipulates her through his self-destruction. A decade or so earlier, Richard’s younger brother Jason—then three years old—is left alone with his hapless Uncle Lol. A lodger tricks Lol into drinking the stash of alcohol hidden in the house and neglecting Jason. Liz violently punishes him upon her return. In 1985 Jason, now 10 years old, goes out with a friend on Bonfire Night but can’t find his way home and ends up sleeping in a shed. He is finally taken into care. When a social worker breaks the news to Ray and Liz, Liz cries a little, but quickly forgets…
Director Richard Billingham | 2018 | In English | 108 minutes | NR | DCP