Genres: Drama
Releasing Date: 20 December 2013 (USA)
Director: Clio Barnard
Writer: Clio Barnard
Stars: Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas and Sean Gilder
Language: English
Warning: The use of this clip may result in feelings of helplessness, sadness and anger. At the same time, and here the paradoxical effect of Clio Barnard’s second feature film comes into play is The Selfish Giant , a therapeutic for the soul. A shock treatment in the literal and figurative sense. The heroes of the story are Arbor (Conner Chapman) and Swifty (Shaun Thomas), two 13-year-old from a suburb of the northern industrial city of Bradford. The two friends could not be more different. Arbor is an ADHD child as it is in the book: rebellious, irreverent, under constant current, the bare nerves just poorly insulated with Ritalin. Swifty, however, is a Stoic (to be understood in the colloquial sense); kind, tolerant and a bit portly, but also blessed with a knack for handling horses. Common to both the lack of prospects, in which they have been hineingeschissen of their life unfit parents. Post-industrial out-of-work class for which the term “socially weak” sounds much too social.
Arbors mother slips away alone raising their two children completely, her small criminal elder son finance his drug use by vertickt the tablets of his brother to junkies, while Arbor truant to collect “scraps” (scrap metal) and the of boiled scrap dealers on let stand at table. The work activities of Swifty’s parents is limited to the half-hearted witnesses and caning of children. You have “lucky” that the staff of the Youth Office show no ambition to take a closer look with the verminous horde of children, and the fact that the children have to live on a garbage dump, overlooked the inspectors as well as the cold canned food, which the young to celebrate set before the youth welfare office visit gets (“achievement” would be too much to say, because all useful furnishings have already been removed by bailiffs and other debt collectors from the verranzten apartment). For teachers, it is already a success if they have kept the social rejects that they are to teach there for a day without insurance case, and the resigned officials practice in it, even in the face of flagrant abuses turning a blind eye. It is evident at first glance that the means to which children engage to improve their lives and that of their families who are the worst of all possible. Instead – as demanded by the prototypical little stick adults – to bet on the long-term perspective of education, try Arbor and Swifty, immediately do something about the misery of their families. Metal, also stolen, brings quick cash, participation in illegal harness racing as well. So the boys for several reasons scrap dealer Kitten (Sean Glider) are attracted, which not only has a junkyard, but also a promising trotter. Kitten is its innocuous name despite a brutal cutthroat that exploits the children shamelessly and drives in a swamp of dependency, guilt and mistrust into it