The Selfish Giant
Jan 17 - Jan 22, 2014
(Clio Barnard, United Kingdom, 2013, DCP, 91 min)
Seattle premiere!
A global recession-era take on an Oscar Wilde fable, The Selfish Giant tells the tale of two adolescent boys who get by in their rural central England town by pilfering scrap metal and racing horses. Thirteen year-old Arbor and his best friend Swifty are outsiders, literally living on the outskirts of lavish estates. They meet a local scrap dealer, Kitten, who favors the kind-hearted Swifty, even as Arbor strives to impress Kitten with his money-making schemes.
British director Clio Barnard's crafting of a social realist fairy tale has earned her comparisons to the work of Ken Loach. Barnard won widespread acclaim for her first film, the experimental documentary The Arbor (about playwright Andrea Dunbar). The Selfish Giant premiered at Cannes and has gone on to win festival awards and appear on 2013 Top 10 lists.
"blending the elegant childhood-memory containment of Stand by Me with the minute-by-minute grittiness of Trainspotting. Go see it." —The Stranger
"Whether she’s honoring those thick accents, finding the proper pitch for the boys’ tussling friendship, or pausing for eerie shots of the town’s nuclear towers shrouded in fog, Barnard rarely sets a foot wrong." —Seattle Weekly
"worth seeing for its gritty honesty and strong cast" —The Seattle Times