Sweet Sixteen

Liam is a Scottish teenager on the verge of his sixteenth birthday who wants something better than the life he has known. His mother, Jean, is in prison, and once she is released he hopes they can live together as a family at last, along with his sister Chantelle. To make that possible he needs money, and the only route open to him in his deprived hometown is the local drug trade, which already involves his mother's boyfriend Stan and his own grandfather. His attempts to raise the cash draw him deeper into that world and put him on a collision course with the people around him.

Ken Loach directed the film from a screenplay by Paul Laverty, with Rebecca O'Brien and Gerardo Herrero producing. It is the ninth of the twenty features Loach has directed in chronological order, following The Navigators and preceding September 11. Martin Compston plays Liam in the lead role, with Annmarie Fulton as Chantelle, William Ruane as Pinball, Michelle Coulter as Jean and Gary McCormack as Stan.

Released in 2002, the film runs 106 minutes and was produced across the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 16,000 votes, while on TMDB its rating is 7 from 261 votes. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 87 reviews places it above both audience scores.