I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
Five working-class Gen Z friends drift apart in this deeply felt study of adulthood that won the Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award at Cannes.
Patrick, Shiv, Conor, Rian and Oli have been thick as thieves since they were kids growing up in Birmingham council towers. Now, at the end of their twenties, Shiv’s a proud mum of two, while her childhood sweetheart Patrick is a humiliated gig-economy courier and hard-partying Oli has fallen into drug dealing. On the other side of the tracks, upwardly mobile stresshead Conor runs his own construction firm, while London financier Rian languishes in lonely wealth. As the economic realities of late-stage capitalism demolish their dreams, fissures appear in their once-unbreakable friendships.
Adapting Keiran Goddard’s acclaimed novel of the same name, director Clio Barnard (The Selfish Giant, MIFF 2013) and scenarist Enda Walsh (Hunger, MIFF 2008) compassionately observe their young characters’ social-realist dilemmas, while leads Daryl McCormack (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande), Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo and reunited Say Nothing breakouts Lola Petticrew (Tuesday, MIFF 2024) and Anthony Boyle deliver poignant, lived-in performances.
“It’s a film whose mix of poignancy, defiance and contaminated euphoria stayed with me hours after the closing credits.” – The Guardian
Tickets
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