Shiney
2020 · 15m · UK
Directed by Paul Holbrook
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
Two creative but impressionable preteens on a working-class Bristol housing estate hatch a plan to buy their first packet of cigarettes, all while clinging to their prized possession: an impossibly rare shiny gold football sticker. Set in 2011, it's a nostalgic, punky, feel-good summer-holiday coming-of-age tale.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a coming-of-age film about kids wanting cigarettes—sounds like a thousand other nostalgia trips until you realize Holbrook just cast the actual estate and let them *be*, which somehow makes the whole thing feel like a Trojan horse for something weirder and more honest than the premise deserves.
Holbrook situates himself squarely in the British social realist tradition, but the decision to shoot non-actors in their own neighborhood—rather than importing trained performers—risks sacrificing the formal control that usually elevates such work; here it mostly just feels sincere.
The entire film hinges on Holbrook's single, gutsy choice to cast Hartcliffe locals as themselves, and that decision—unglamorous, technically riskier, demanding a different kind of directing—is what transforms a slight premise about stickers and cigarettes into something that actually *breathes*.
Reviews
A punky-fun, highly stylized coming of age film with a knock out cast of young talent who have a firm grasp on comedic timing and delivery.
Writer/director Paul Holbrook and co-writer Graeme Willetts deliver a nostalgic, organically funny and at times touching coming of age story.
Festivals
- Oxford International Short Film Festival 2021, Best Young Performer (Katie Francis)