Director Clio Barnard has delivered a movie that's excellently made but is in the end maybe a bit too suffocating to enjoy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 25, 2022

With great empathy for her characters, Barnard locates her movie in a bleak, postindustrial landscape.

| Feb 27, 2021

An assured and disciplined work, raw like a festering wound, and devastatingly blunt, establishing Barnard as one of the strongest voices in British independent cinema.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 7, 2019

Clearly inspired by Ken Loach's films and the work of Andrea Dunbar (her subject for The Arbor), The Selfish Giant is a simple, tragic and ultimately moving work.

| Original Score: 7.8/10 | Jun 22, 2019

The Selfish Giant rejects the stark glumness of most recent neo-kitchen sink offerings in favour of childish adventure as Arbor and Swifty attempt to flesh out their respective futures.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 5, 2019

The Selfish Giant is a powerhouse of a film, a huge success as Clio Barnard's first narrative.

| Jan 30, 2019

A social-realist contemporary re-working of Oscar Wilde's children's tale of the same name, this film is unapologetically miserable, gritty, British cinema. And it's brilliant.

| Jan 30, 2019

It never feels particularly fresh, but it does feel real and true, is superbly performed, and it does pack quite an emotional punch. I had to gather myself afterwards, and I'm still gathering myself, and may be gathering myself for some time to come.

| Sep 5, 2018

"The Selfish Giant" is a beautiful, profound, perfectly acted film... but I can't say you should watch it, because it is so unbearably sad that you'll be completely sorry you started it.

| Aug 22, 2018

If you know any teenage boys with anger issues or a tendency to get into trouble, this movie definitely speaks their language.

| Aug 10, 2018

In the absence of any apparent formal conceit, Barnard's parable is still raw enough to wound while its emotional impact could wring tears from metal.

| Oct 10, 2017

Strong, beautiful and honest film-making.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 6, 2017

Barnard bolsters this central friendship and subsequent unwitting rivalry with myriad background details to flesh out their world and expose how dire circumstances are.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 21, 2016

Though they share the same title, director Clio Barnard's bewitching follow-up to The Arbor bears little cosmetic similarity to the fluorescent idyll of Oscar Wilde's 19th century children's fable.

Full Review | Aug 18, 2015

Writer-director Clio Barnard directs with ferocious maturity, galvanising "scrap" pieces of everyday life into a wonderfully cinematic whole.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2014

Barnard's film is charged with the same compassion and lyricism. It is one of those desperately sad and dispiriting films that one would prefer to forget but probably never will.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 11, 2014

There is a plot (adapted from Oscar Wilde's famous short story of the same name), and it's a good one, but ... most important are Arbor and Swifty, played to pure perfection by little Connor Chapman and big Shaun Thomas.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 6, 2014

The Selfish Giant is one of the best films of the year: captivating, often funny, and filled with the most naturalistic performances you're likely to see.

| Aug 4, 2014

Barnard's work with these two child actors is extraordinary, and she has written a lean script.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2014

Anyone worried that the spirit of British social-realist director Ken Loach might not continue once he goes can take heart. Newbie director Clio Barnard has his style down pat as she tells of two teenage truants who scrounge for scrap metal.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 1, 2014