CANNES 2026 Directors’ Fortnight
Review: I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
by David Katz
- CANNES 2026: Clio Barnard returns with a hard-hitting ensemble drama set in working-class Birmingham, following five longtime friends as they face new challenges upon hitting 30
English cities – in the south, but especially in the north – are typically landscapes of grey, unprepossessing tower blocks. Largely constructed at the end of the 1960s, these structures have become emblems of a time of particular hope, social progress and community for left-leaning folk in the country, and Clio Barnard cannily invokes them for her latest film I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, which has just won the People’s Choice Award in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight (see the news). Following five longtime friends as they reach the cusp of their 30s, Barnard depicts them as a “community”, of sorts, but one ultimately broken by the UK’s dire prospects for working-class life in 2026, including its current housing crisis. Still, the film’s energy and brio are undermined by the miserabilism and melodrama that British social realism often falls victim to.
Set in the West Midlands city of Birmingham, the movie is bookended by two tracks from The Streets’ classic 2002 garage album Original Pirate Material – apt, as the musician (whose real name is Mike Skinner) is one of the area’s favourite cultural sons, although it’s slightly anachronistic, it being a generation removed from the characters’ likely tastes. The opening sequence finds the five mates – Rian (Joe Cole), Patrick (Anthony Boyle), Oli (Jay Lycurgo), Conor (Daryl McCormack) and Shiv (Lola Petticrew) – dancing and drinking (alongside some hard drug consumption) in a pub, then a club, for one of their 30th birthdays, and all seems fairly optimistic. Yet as we learn of their occupations and responsibilities, while the narrative tracks (courtesy of screenwriter Enda Walsh, adapting Kieran Goddard’s novel) are laid out, an air of predictability and fatalism sets in.
With quick-cut inserts of tower-block demolitions often interrupting the action (Barnard is indeed a more forthright visual stylist than Leigh or Loach), we learn that Conor is the lead builder on a new affordable homes project, funded with a large injection of capital from Rian, who’s become fairly rich (which partially estranges him from his background) through what he describes as “trading and stocks”. Oli deals heroin, yet makes a belated ethical turn (together with adopting a stray dog he finds on a “drop”) and asks Conor for work; Patrick – the sole university-educated member of the group – is eking out a poor living on a delivery app, while Shiv, his loyal girlfriend, is also the mother of two young children.
With the situation exacerbated largely by Conor’s struggles as a new father, and his balance-sheet issues as he tries to combine Rian’s financial foundation with some cost-cutting of his own, the group fall into a mutual downward spiral, with Barnard forcefully conveying each one’s emotional burden. The most insightful of her observations – in addition to the critiques of neoliberal housing policy offered by the politically switched-on Patrick – is that this troupe have stayed friends, and arguably regressed, in lieu of forming more mature adult bonds. As flawed sources of solidarity, and sounding boards for advice, they bring out the worst in one another, yet the film’s unsubtle writing and direction also prevent their emotional travails from truly connecting with us.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is a UK production staged by Moonspun Films, with the support of BBC Film and the BFI. Its international sales are handled by Charades.
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