RATCATCHER

Glasgow, 1973. Scotland grapples with a nationwide binmen collectors' strike, plunging already impoverished estates into an even greater crisis, symbolised by towering piles of rubbish in black bags and scurrying rats. 

Nestled in one such impoverished block is twelve-year-old James (played by the natural William Eadie), who - after pushing a friend into a nearby dirty canal - inadvertently causes the peer's death. Without confessing to anyone what has happened, the boy wanders around the ruined neighbourhood. 

Although at first glance his life seems to go on as usual, in reality, everything is transformed. His guilty conscience drives the boy to escape, but he has nowhere to go. He is trapped, much like those rodents. The chance for change - for James and his entire family - lies in the newly built apartments somewhere nearby, surrounded by fields stretching to the horizon and bathed in golden sunlight. Or is it just a dream?

In the earliest full-length feature, director Lynne Ramsay, winner of the BAFTA Best Newcomer Award, juxtaposes the social realism of the old British masters - from Ken Loach to Mike Leigh - with surrealism and lyricism. 

The tangible is mixed here with the dreamlike, and the boundary between the two orders blurs with each successive scene. Reconstructing the brutal reality of the 1970s and the accompanying moods, the author creates an initiating work that has forever left its mark on the history of cinema.

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Rafał Glapiak

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The screening will be followed by a meeting with the director Lynne Ramsay and editor Lucia Zuchcetti.