This Is England

United Kingdom director: Shane Meadows 2006 / 98 min. / English version WITH CZECH SUBTITLES cast: Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Jo Hartley, Andrew Shim, Vicky McClure

This Is England tells the story of Shaun, a 12-year-old kid growing up without a father in northern England. Set during the summer holidays of 1983, the film charts Shaun’s rites of passage from a scruffy misfit grieving the loss of his father to a shaven-headed thug whose anger and pain are embraced by the local skinhead fraternity. With only a shell of a mother, and no father to guide him, Shaun seems set for self-destruction But it is not long before things turn sour with his new-found ‘friends’ and Shaun discovers that violence is the coward’s answer.