This Is English
2019 · 9m · UK
Directed by Sam Hurlock, Joe Beverley
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, humorous
Fourteen years after forming a group of grammar enthusiasts, Clive decides to escalate the war on misspelt words by turning his crew into a legitimate political organisation — a mockumentary parody of EDL-style nationalist outfits whose xenophobic rage is redirected entirely at misplaced apostrophes.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The audacity of redirecting EDL aesthetics—the rhetoric, the fury, the organizational zealotry—onto apostrophe placement is exactly the kind of absurdist inversion that makes consensus scouts uncomfortable, which means it's probably brilliant; Hurlock and Beverley have weaponized grammar pedantry into a scathing political mirror without ever winking at the audience.
A formally rigorous satire that understands its lineage in British mockumentary tradition while executing a precise formal conceit—the grammar-nationalism parallel holds structurally because the filmmakers respect both the documentary form and the linguistic stakes, creating something that will sustain serious discussion about satire's mechanics.
The choice to play the earnest pub-meeting strategy sessions completely straight, treating Scrabble-tile iconography with the gravitas of nationalist symbology, is the decision that makes this work—it's a small-budget film that trusts its single satirical inversion entirely, letting restraint do the heavy lifting.
Reviews
This film is a triple threat, it's funny as hell, it takes aim at a reprehensible group of people and it promotes education.
The screenplay is filled with very clever humour... It is an entertaining experience, very likely to cause a great deal of laughter.
Festivals
- Edinburgh Independent Film Awards 2019, Winner
- London Short Series Festival 2019, Best British Vibe Award