Nil by Mouth (1997)

Director: Gary Oldman

Stars: Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Charlie Creed-Miles, Laila Morse

27 years after its release, it's remarkable that Gary Oldman’s one and only director credit is for Nil By Mouth, a searingly personal and accomplished film that is now a classic of British cinema.

Remaining the rawest slice of London underclass life committed to film, Nil by Mouth is also a work of art – an assembly of career best performances framed by tight, shaky, fly-on-the-wall camerawork, like the view of a nervous child peeking at what the grown-ups are doing. It’s by turns intimate and claustrophobic – when family are at peace it’s comforting, but when things are kicking off there’s nowhere to go. Switching between dark, smoky bars, blue-grey bleak day-time and the sickly neon green of streetlighting and council flat corridors, ironically one warmly-lit scene is of heroin addict Billy injecting himself with something that likely feels better than his environment. The depiction of domestic violence remains as some of the toughest stuff you’ll see on screen, but gradually the line of matriarchs that stoically form the backbone of this family emerge in place of the brash and aimless chatter of pained and frustrated men.