Small City

Absolutely brilliant film Definitely under rated and watched.

The performances were so real that couldn't imagine they were actors.

A hard watch but worth it.

Now that was an intense 74 minutes! Small City takes you on a mad ride through the alleys, stairwells and bedsits of London as Ozzy attempts to rescue Zia. There's violence but there's also tenderness in this story that doesn't follow the typical cliches of so many films that depict inner city London. A brilliant debut film and I look forward to seeing what these guys make next.

Ozzy (Eddie Thompson), a young East End hustler, and a beautiful, yet naïve eastern european drug mule Zia (Isabella Nefar) forge an unlikely alliance following a brutal, life altering incident with his vicious gangster boss. A far from routine exercise in urban angst, Small City cannily avoids most of the expected inner City Chav-fest clichés. The dark and moody themes of underworld brutality, and bloody catharcis are excitingly expressed in a vibrant manner. Palpably big-hearted, Small City is a blunt, smart, refreshingly humanist darksided drama. The two disparate, increasingly desperate runaways, forced on the lam by Ozzy's protective instincts make for enormously sympathetic protagonists, and their appealingly open, natural performances allow for genuine sympathy. Small City is an electric urban thriller, replete with shockingly violent interludes, yet remaining a compellingly intimate, panther paced story of two dispossessed young people who find one another in the direst of circumstances.

In Small City the criss crossing lives of those surviving in the intensities of inner city London are given a dignity and poignancy that is unusual. This is enhanced by wonderful cinematic vision and emotionally telling music that fits perfectly with the whole. In addition the acting, at once natural and controlled, is exceptional.

London - a global meta city of multi dimensional infinite complexity- can be thought of as a set of competing 'nations'. Those who live in one may know little or nothing of what happens in the others.

Here we are given a privileged view of one of the most bleakly deadly- and yet alive- sub cities- maybe the Small City of the title.

The entirely believable relationship between the lead couple- one a seemingly demur young woman of East European extraction who turns out to be as deadly as any gang member- and the male lead- deeply saturated in the lethal play of the drug led warfare- aches with a kind of doomed urban glamour.

I'm writing this as I watch- so I don't know how it ends.

Highly recommended.

Snm.film was lit. Banging cinematography. Good peformances. Good choices made all around.