I Used to Live Here

Inspired by a series of Irish Times articles on cluster suicides, Frank Berry's feature debut was workshopped with a largely non-professional cast from the Tallaght part of Dublin. Jordanne Jones impresses as 13-year-old Amy who is still struggling to get over the death of her mother when she is shaken by a classmate jumping to his death off a motorway bridge. Further complicating matters is the fact that her father (James Kelly) has just discovered he has a child with his ex-girlfriend (Alicja Ayres), while her best mate (Dafhyd Flynn) has fallen in with some drug-dealing bullies. Things briefly look brighter after handsome Smithy (Ross Geraghty) asks Amy out, only for her mood to dip drastically after being humiliatingly stood up. While the Kelly-Ayres subplot errs towards melodrama and the drugs strand feels formulaic, Berry delivers an uncompromising study of a tragic trend that owes much to Andrea Arnold's brand of social realism and within that, he captures the anxieties of a dead-end adolescent existence with laudable sensitivity.