Bird

Bailey is twelve years old and lives with her father Bug and her brother Hunter in a squat in North Kent. Bug, who is raising the children on his own, has little time for them, and Bailey, on the edge of puberty, looks for attention and excitement outside the home. After a row with her father she runs off again and meets Bird, an unusual man who appears out of nowhere, and he becomes the person she trusts most in a world where nobody seems to be looking after her.

Andrea Arnold directed and wrote the film, her fifth feature after Red Road, Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights and American Honey. Nykiya Adams plays Bailey, with Franz Rogowski as Bird, Barry Keoghan as Bug, Jason Buda as Hunter, Jasmine Jobson as Peyton and Frankie Box as Kayleigh. It is a British, American and French production, made with BBC Film, the BFI, ARTE France Cinéma and Access Entertainment, and it runs 119 minutes.

The film took about 2 million dollars worldwide, a modest figure for a drama of this scale. Audiences rate it at 7 on IMDb from around 12,000 votes and 7.2 on TMDB from roughly 240 votes, while critics give it 7.4 from 139 reviews, so critical and audience assessments sit close together.