Fish Tank (2009)

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British director Andrea Arnold (RED ROAD) won the Cannes Jury Prize for the searing and invigorating FISH TANK, about a fifteen-year-old girl, Mia (electrifying newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives with her mother and sister in the depressed housing projects of Essex. Mias adolescent conflicts and emerging sexuality reach boiling points when her mothers new boyfriend (a lethally attractive Michael Fassbender [HUNGER, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS]) enters the picture. In her young career, Arnold has already proven herself to be a master of social realism (evoking the work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach), investing her sympathetic portraits of dead-end lives with a poetic, earthy sensibility all her own. FISH TANK heralds the official arrival of a major new filmmaker.

Director Andrea Arnold follows her astonishing debut feature RED ROAD with FISH TANK, a compelling drama centring on a 15 year-old girl. Having been expelled from school, Mia (Katie Jarvis in a star-making debut performance) spends her time hanging out in a derelict flat near to her family`s council estate home and drinking whatever alcohol she can lay her hands on. Her young life, already spiralling out of control, is complicated further when her mother Joanne - (Kierston Wareing - IT`S A FREE WORLD) brings home her new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender - HUNGER, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS). While Connor appears to be a well-rounded and decent man, there is an instant connection between him and Mia, even though there`s much hostility on her part. Could this be the manifestation of a teenage crush and Connor`s awkward reaction to it, or are his intentions something altogether more sinister?