Little Shit
2018 · 15m
Directed by Richard Gorodecky
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
The most unpopular kid in school gets a sympathetic, sharply cut portrait that deconstructs the myth behind the label everyone slaps on him.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a sensitive portrait of the school pariah—which sounds like every indie coming-of-age film ever made, except the title is a slur and the whole thing refuses to look away from how casually cruelty sticks to a kid. Gorodecky's betting you'll actually care about deconstruction instead of redemption, and he's mostly right.
A film conscious of its place in the tradition of social-realist portraiture, using sharp cutting and compositional restraint to situate sympathy within documentary-like observation rather than melodrama. The formal discipline here—the withholding of easy resolution—marks a considered hand.
What works is the editing rhythm: Gorodecky cuts before you expect emotional release, holding the frame just long enough that the label and the kid become two separate things you're forced to reckon with. That single choice—refusing the catharsis beat—is what makes the whole thing tender instead of pitying.
Reviews
Skelton, with his expressive eyes and a long lost demeanour of a child, strikes the chord instantly with the audience. But, it's his aching loneliness which is well captured in his often destructive but comforting moments of solitude by the streets of London that is riveting.