Writer-director Henry Blake’s powerful feature debut County Lines boasts a compelling central performance by Conrad Khan as 14-year-old Tyler, whose mum Toni (Ashley Madekwe) is struggling to provide for him and his sister. Excluded from school, Tyler becomes a train-bound narcotics courier for local criminal Simon, played with a calm menace by Harris Dickinson.
This film depicts the ensuing cycle of debt, deceit and violent exploitation with a quiet stylistic confidence that’s all the more haunting for being so rigorously unsentimental.
“The filmmaking is so sharp… I was hooked… The acting is superb” – Charlotte O’Sullivan, Evening Standard
County lines is a term that refers to the grooming, exploitation and trafficking of children as drug mules across the country and Blake’s incredible story is inspired by his own experiences working with young people just like Tyler. For over a decade, he’s worked with vulnerable children aged between 8 and 18, and through that work he was transferred to a facility for kids who were being exploited and trafficked via county lines criminal networks.
County Lines follows in the wake of outstanding British social realism and Henry Blake is sure to be discussed alongside directors like Ken Loach, Basil Dearden and Alan Clarke for his unflinching portrait ripped straight from the headlines.
“This is brute social realism with a thriller’s ticking clock: The tension is not over what will happen but when, and how fatal the fallout will be.” Guy Lodge, Variety
County Lines is showing at the No. 6 Cinema on Thursday 24th March. This community-curated screening by young people from Motiv8 includes a performance by DJs and rappers from Music Fusion and a Q&A with the film’s producer David Broder in the bar before the film.
Tickets are available here.
