AFI FEST Los Angeles International Film Festival 2009

Deepening her exploration of the British working class on view in her Oscar-winning 2003 short film WASP and her 2006 Cannes Jury Prize-winning feature debut, RED ROAD, Andrea Arnold evokes the social realist tradition and influence of the gritty British New Wave films of the ’50s and ’60s.

FISH TANK features a remarkable acting debut by Katie Jarvis as Mia, a brash 15-year-old on the cusp of coming of age sexually. The cheap public housing block where Mia lives with her single mother and younger sister can barely contain their bad behavior and brutal affection, let alone her mum’s new boyfriend (HUNGER’s Michael Fassbender). With headphones on, Mia finds an escape route through dance and the calm of Constable’s pastoral Essex countryside, where the wasteland is transformed into waves of grass and miles of sky. Winner of the 2009 Cannes Jury Prize.

–Jacqueline Lyanga