Rosie

Much in the same way that anger spurred Ken Loach to return to the screen with I, Daniel Blake, Irish writer Roddy Doyle (The Commitments) was similarly fired up to write the screenplay for this ripped-from-the-headlines story that gives focus to a new dread phrase: "the working poor". This is an intimately plotted day-and-a-half in the life of young mum Rosie (Sarah Greene), her restaurant worker husband (Moe Dunford) and their four kids, who are forced to live in a car after being evicted from their Dublin home amid a housing crisis. Under the sympathetic direction of Paddy Breathnach, we are shown the precision-timed routines designed to provide a fragile stability for the sake of the kids, but the physical and emotional strain is clear for all to see. "We don't use that word," Rosie snaps when described as homeless, but she doesn't rage at the system like Loach's Daniel Blake; rather, we see her resilience incrementally tested as she searches for a room to stay via the lifeline of her mobile phone. Without sentimentality, Doyle and Breathnach offer tiny flashes of hope without easy resolutions. A powerful indictment of our times.