• Rocks is made in the mode of realism- a break from Sarah Gavron’s previous effort Suffragette (2015) which is more a traditional period drama.
  • This story tracks non-professional actor Bukky Bakray playing “Rocks”.
  • Gavron makes the strong formal choice of grounding the film in realism with the smartphone/iphone footage opening and closing
  • a harrowing tale of abandonment, survival, and ultimately friendship
  • this is made in Mike Leigh’s lower income, working class UK- housing projects
  • handheld camera often, and like The Dardenne brothers- the specific situation/crisis arrives pretty quickly here: Rocks’ mother abandons her and her younger brother
  • the school is depicted here as totally out of touch- almost like a prison. In one scene they show an employee of the school (adult) inspecting the children one by one as they pass picking them off. In another, when Rocks acts up, she is put in “isolation”
  • a very well written and performed argument between Bakray and her friend Sumaya (played by Kosar Ali)
  • Recommend but not not the top 10 of 2019- still below Young Ahmed which is a lesser Dardenne film