A Good Start
2023 · 12m · UK
Directed by Sarah Blok
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In the early hours of the morning, two young men returning from a rave encounter a new mother at a petrol station driving through the night to keep her newborn from crying. The chance meeting explores unconventional motherhood and masculine fragility.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Blok's instinct to set intimacy in the most alienating possible location — a motorway petrol station at 4am — is what makes this work, because the strangeness of the meeting is what makes it feel true.
Cannes Lions Silver Young Director, 16mm at NFTS, 3am petrol station as warm space. Arnold and Ramsay are not casual invocations; the location work alone earns trust.
Blok's fluorescent-petrol-station-at-3am setting is the entire formal proposition — Andrea Arnold's territory, the Lynne Ramsay-adjacent attention to texture. NFTS + 16mm + Cannes Lions Silver Young Director is exactly the pedigree-and-discipline combination I find dependable.
Festivals
- Cannes Lions Young Director Award 2023, Silver Young Director Award