Sixteen
Starring: Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Rachael Stirling, Rosie Day, Fady Elsayed, Sam Spruell
Director: Rob Brown
Rating: 3.5/5
Rob Brown is a director to keep an eye on as he is set to make his debut with Sixteen: a movie that is being screening the First Feature Competition section at the BFI London Film Festival.
The festival has been screening a raft of exciting British films, and Sixteen is one of them.
Set in London the movie follows Jumah; a former African child solider who has been brought to the UK by an aid worker.
Just when it looks like Jumah is starting to move forward a violent incident puts his life in danger.
When you watch this movie there is one thing that stands out over everything else, and that is actor Roger Nsengiyumva. It's hard to believe that Nsengiyumva is so inexperienced as he is just so riveting to watch.
There is an anguish to the character of Jumah that is almost unbearable - he is a character who is truly haunted by what he did and saw in his childhood.
Nsengiyumva is just wonderful as he conveys this anguish and pain in such a powerful way: there is just an incredible sadness in his eyes that it really will break your heart.
This young actor deserves to be slapped on the back for the central performance that he has delivered here, and it is going to be exciting to see just what he does next.
Brown has been very clever with this film as he doesn't give you the whole story. We never fully discover what happened in Jumah's past, and so the audience is left to wonder and make up stories for themselves about what horrors he may have seen,
From start to finish Sixteen is an interesting story and a great new take on the gritty British drama - it really is incredibly different to any other films that we have seen in this genre so far this year.
The film is not without its flaws, as the dialogue is quite clunky and quite a lot of the lines uttered are unmemorable: which is a surprise for a story that is so good.
Rob Brown really has delivered a very interesting and intriguing directorial debut that should be watch for Roger Nsengiyumva's central performance.
The BFI London Film Festival runs from 9th - 20th October.
Tagged in BFI