This Is England

1983 was a time before MTV and Gameboy, when there was very little to keep the disenchanted British youth anaesthetised. As unemployment figures rose and Youth Training Schemes fell, the kids refused to toe the factory line and spilled out onto the streets. Rockers, New Romantics, Mods, Punks and Skinheads stood shoulder to shoulder, hissing and spitting in the discos, precincts and subways of the working class towns across the nation. THIS IS ENGLAND tells the story of Shaun, a 12-year-old kid growing up without a father in the north of England. Set during the summer holidays of 1983, the film charts his rites of passage from a scruffy misfit grieving the loss of his father into a shaven-headed thug whose anger and pain are embraced by the local skinhead fraternity. With 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.