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LONDON 2013

Sixteen: Surviving the urban jungle

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- Powerful tale of a former child soldier marks an assured debut, starring Roger Jean Nsengiyumva and Rachael Stirling

Sixteen: Surviving the urban jungle

Writer/director Rob Brown’s short Silent Things premiered at the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2011 and won the New Arrivals jury award. His first feature script, Sixteen [+see also:
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, was chosen from 400 entries for a performed reading at the Bafta Rocliffe New Writing Forum at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2011. That script has now been realised into an assured feature debut.

Jumah (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Africa United [+see also:
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), two days shy of his 16th birthday, is a problem child. A former child soldier from the Congo, he is working with his foster mother, the aid worker Laura (Rachael Stirling, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen [+see also:
trailer
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]
) to control the violent urges that have seen his expulsion from a few schools previously. A warrior, however, is always a warrior and a disagreement with the school jock sees him break his nose, leading to a last and final chance from the headmaster, upon pleading from Laura. Jumah must stay on the straight and narrow if he wants to complete his school education and have hopes for a future. Matters are exacerbated when he is the eyewitness to a fatal stabbing perpetrated by his schoolmate who works for the local thug. Jumah must now choose between standing up for the truth and betraying his schoolmate with whom there is little love lost anyway or succumb to the pressure being applied on his family by the thug and stay silent. To compound matters, Jumah also has to deal with his burgeoning relationship, and hormonal urges, with another schoolmate Chloe (Rosie Day, The Seasoning House). And, he must find a way to engage in his unlikely profession of choice, hairdressing.

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Sixteen is a quiet, muted take on the urban thriller. The menace comes from silences and whispered threats rather than loud confrontations. Even though London is a throbbing megalopolis, the world Sixteen inhabits is eerily hushed and all the characters appear to be living under the burden of a nameless fear. This is the real London, a city far removed from the picture postcard excesses of Richard Curtis, and a place that the average tourist will never see. Brown excels in creating a universe where iconic trappings of the city, such as the red buses and the red, blue and white underground are seen, but at a distance. Jumah has merely exchanged an African jungle for an urban one. Inhabiting this universe is a cast of utterly believable characters. Nsengiyumva in particular is tremendous in conveying all the confusion of his age, his past history and his current predicament. Stirling is adequate at conveying both the frustration and love Laura feels. The strength of a good filmmaker lies in creating a unique world and to get the audience to live in it for a period of time. Alfonso Cuaron did this spectacularly with the big budget Gravity [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile
]
and at the other end of the scale Brown achieves this with Sixteen.

Sixteen is a Seize Films production with some funding raised via Kickstarter.

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