Rocket Fuel
2025 · 15m · United Kingdom
Directed by Jordon Scott Kennedy
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, sci-fi
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
On the outskirts of Bradford, kids Lenny and Mullet find an abandoned car and turn it into a DIY spaceship.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a kids-find-a-car story dressed up as sci-fi whimsy, which is exactly the kind of premise that works *because* it doesn't pretend to be more subversive than it is—though I'd be lying if I said the Bradford setting doing actual heavy lifting against the indie-twee instinct didn't catch me off guard.
Kennedy situates this squarely in the British coming-of-age lineage (echoes of *This Is England*'s texture, but gentler), and the formal restraint—letting the kids' imagination do the world-building rather than effects—shows real curatorial discipline in what could've been a sentimental mess.
The entire film hinges on the decision to shoot the "spaceship" sequences with the same naturalistic grounding as the Bradford scenes, no filters or cuteness, which makes the kids' conviction utterly believable and transforms a shoestring premise into something that actually *feels* like wonder rather than performing it.