Filmmaker Statement

I came to film through youth work. This film is based on a kid who I used to work with. He had no family. He couldn’t read or write and didn’t have a crew of lads to do crime with as he was quite childlike, never having had space to be child as he grew up. So other boys would take advantage of him. What he really wanted was attention. He liked being held by the police when they nicked him, as no one in his life ever held him. He liked sitting in an interview room and having adults talk to him one on one. I had been thinking about writing a short inspired by this kid. Then I saw a news story about a lad who stole a car with a baby in the back seat. The boy took the car back and told the mum off for leaving her in there. It struck me that inserting Ryan into this story would give me a chance to explore his lost childhood as well as allowing him to connect with the idea of family as he cares for the kid. The situation would also give him the chance to talk to the mum he never had.