Detainment

Detainment is a thirty-minute short film that dramatises the police questioning of two ten-year-old boys suspected of abducting and killing a toddler. Based on a real case that drew attention in England in 1993, the film stays inside the interrogation rooms, where detectives press the children for answers and their families wait nearby. Ely Solan and Leon Hughes play the two boys, Jon and Robert, while Will O'Connell, David Ryan and Morgan C. Jones appear as the officers conducting the interviews and Tara Breathnach plays Susan Venables.

Vincent Lambe wrote and directed the film, which he also produced with Darren Mahon, and it was made by Twelve Media as a co-production between the United Kingdom and Ireland. It marked an early point in Lambe's filmmaking career, with the screenplay and direction both his own. Released in 2018, the short ran half an hour and belongs to the crime, documentary and drama genres, blending reconstructed dialogue with a scripted approach to the questioning.

Audience response has been positive without being overwhelming. On IMDb, where the film has attracted a substantial number of votes, it holds a rating of 7.1 out of 10, while on TMDB, where far fewer users have rated it, the score sits at 6.7 out of 10. The gap reflects the different sizes of the two audiences rather than any disagreement about the film's merits.