Ish

Writer-and-director Imran Perretta’s tender-hearted feature debut Ish is a coming-of-age story to rival (if not outrun) the likes of Scrapper and Aftersun. Like Lukas Dhont’s Close, the film — co-written by Disco Pigs’ Enda Walsh —charts the rupture of the bond between two boys under societal pressure. In the sweet spot between sentimentality and restraint, it’s a striking, deeply moving study of how anger foments for young people facing systemic racism.

Set in a predominantly Muslim community in rundown Luton, the title belongs to 12-year-old Ishmail (an impressively nuanced performance from newcomer Farhan Hasnat), whose mother has recently passed away. While his family mourns, Ish seeks emotional refuge with his pal Maram (Yahya Kitana), a slightly more senior kid on the block. Together, they while away a rather bucolic summer: repurposing a dingy old mattress, building a den in the forest and staining their fingers foraging for blackberries.

Yet this blissful bubble is in danger of bursting. Maram is Palestinian, and intermittent radio reports from Gaza or about protests on British soil create an ambient backdrop of dread. Closer to home, there is a lurking threat, signalled by the very first shot, which lingers on an abandoned bike as invisible bystanders holler. Spliced throughout the film, footage from surveillance cameras — kitted out with facial-recognition tech — reveals that plainclothes police are constantly on their tail. And when the temperature rises to boiling point, Maram is literally snatched off the streets by stop-and-searchers while his terrified best bud flees.

Shot in a nostalgic, melancholic black-and-white by cinematographer Jermaine Canute Edwards, Ish expertly tempers a sense of adolescent hope with mounting grown-up pressures. Unsurprisingly, given that Perretta is also a composer, Jens Rosenlund Peterson and Nina Hartstone’s sound design — with its blaring planes, crackling radios and swelling orchestrals — effectively conveys the vast spectrum of emotion experienced by this teen duo. Nothing is overcooked in this hazy summer drama, which takes a complex look at rifts within working-class communities.