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“This Is England is funny, sad, terrifying, and, most of all, utterly engrossing,” said Eric Alt of Premiere. It has rightly been hailed as one of the best British films of recent times.

This hard-hitting drama, set in early 80s Grimsby, follows teenager Shaun, whose life heads for the drain after he falls in with a skinhead gang. Thirteen-year-old newcomer, Thomas Turgoose, invests the impressionable small-town boy with a remarkable depth of character. “He’s the film’s shining core,” enthused Dan Jolin of Empire. “We’ll be amazed if you see a better, more naturalistic child performance this year.”

This Is England scored the Best Film prize at the British Independent Film Awards, adding another feather to the cap of acclaimed young director, Shane Meadows.

It’s never easy to depict racism or violence on the silver screen without glamourising it and The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw struggled with what might be perceived as the film’s ambivalent stance. Still, even he conceded that “Meadows is a real film-maker with a growing and evolving career, and with his own natural cinematic language.”

As in his previous critical successes, A Room For Romeo Brass and Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, Meadows draws extensively on his own youth for the grittily realist This Is England.

“Few directors tap their damaged past as brilliantly as Meadows,” declared Times Reviewer James Christopher. A little film packing a mighty wallop, “This is England is by far his most personal and powerful testimony.”

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Tags: Andrew Shim, drama, Joseph Gilgun, On Demand, reviews, Shane Meadows, This Is England, Thomas Turgoose

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