Street-smart 12-year-old Bailey (played by terrific newcomer Nykiya Adams) lives in a graffiti-tagged squat near the British seaside with her reckless half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda) and her heavily tattooed man-child father, Bug (a perfectly chaotic Barry Keoghan), who’s rushing into a wedding he can’t afford to a woman he barely knows. Adrift in the confusion of adolescence, Bailey finds a kindred spirit in a magnetic stranger named Bird (Franz Rogowski), whose quest to find his estranged family leads Bailey to confront her own mother’s abusive new boyfriend.
This touching coming-of-age drama from three-time Cannes Jury Prize-winning filmmaker Andrea Arnold (American Honey; Fish Tank) matches seasoned actors Keoghan and Rogowski with an authentic cast of first-time performers. With its inventive editing, killer soundtrack, and top-notch cinematography by Robbie Ryan (Poor Things), the film immerses us in the hidden beauty of North Kent through Bailey’s young eyes. The result is a tender portrait of girlhood on the fringes, with a magical realist twist.
Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski, Nykiya Adams
UK/USA/France/Germany
2024
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Claude Amadeo, Mollye Asher, Len Blavatnik, Jessamine Burgum, Danny Cohen, Michael D’Alto, Kara Durrett, Randal Sandler, Chris Triana, Eva Yates
Producer
Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, Lee Groombridge
Screenwriter
Andrea Arnold
Cinematography
Robbie Ryan
Editor
Joe Bini
Production Design
Maxine Carlier
Andrea Arnold
Andrea Arnold studied directing at the AFI Conservatory and won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Wasp in 2005. Her debut film, Red Road, won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2006, and Fish Tank received the Jury Prize and a BAFTA for Best British Film in 2009. Arnold’s other works include Wuthering Heights (2011), American Honey (2016), and the documentary Cow (2021). In 2024, Arnold premiered her latest film Bird at Cannes and was honoured with the Carrosse d’Or Award.
Filmography: Red Road (2006); Fish Tank (2009); Wuthering Heights (2011); American Honey (2016); Cow (2021)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al