How Long Is “This Is England”?

Acclaimed Dead Man's Shoes director Shane Meadows returns to feature filmmaking after a brief foray into short cinema with this semi-autobiographical look of the life-changing experiences that can occur over the course of one transformative summer. The year is 1983 and Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is a lonely 12-year-old English boy whose father was recently killed in the Falklands War. Life in Shaun's quiet coastal community moves at a snail's pace, and without a father figure to look up to, the young boy soon falls in with a rowdy group of local skinheads. Thrilled to be accepted into the tightly knit brotherhood of booze, babes, and Dr. Martin boots, Shaun looks up to his newfound friends, and begins to look up to recently released ex-con and racist skinhead Combo (Stephen Graham) as something of a substitute father figure. When Combo begins taking young Shaun along as he ventures out into the community to harass the local ethnic minorities, the impressionable youngster becomes locked into an unavoidable collision course with an event that is destined to shatter his innocence and instill him with an entirely new outlook on life.