AS IF just BEING A TEENAGER WASN'T HARD ENOUGH... "SIXTEEN"

I love the “first feature” section of the London Film Festival. Getting “into” film remains as tough as ever but at least this gives a very important outlet for those on that all important first rung of the ladder as it were. Of course since it is everyone’s first feature though, it makes picking a bit of an exciting prospect. You literally cannot guess what you’re going to actually end up with. These were my thoughts when I picked Sixteen. I’m not quite sure what exactly made me pick it. That it was set in modern day London was, bizarrely, definitely one thing (modern day London is a bit of an obsession with me at the moment. Strange that it has only hit now seeing as I have been living here for two years now). But the fact that it was about something that we don’t hear much about, namely Congolese child soldiers, was definitely another. Sixteen examines what we might call the “happily ever after”…

You see Jumah has achieved what a lot of people in his situation only hope and pray for. Once a Congolese child soldier, he has been adopted and now lives in the UK with his adopted mother. They are not exactly living in the lap of luxury but Jumah does not complain – he has known worse. And he has all the classic problems of a sixteen year old. Stress, exams, girls, grades… But on top of that he also has severe anger management issues and what is almost certainly PTSD. And the two later topics make it a tad bit harder for him to relate to people, raging hormones aside.  He doesn’t have massive dreams of becoming very rich; what he wants to do is to become a barber and live a quiet life. However, a chance encounter means that completely out of the blue, Jumah is pitched head-first towards something that eerily resembles his earlier, violence-filled life. Can he manage to not spoil his second chance? Or is there really no escaping his dark past?

First of all, genrewise, credit where it is due. Director Rob Brown provides a wonderful update to that very typical British genre the kitchen-sink drama. Well, it’s not quite “kitchen sink”. But then again, it is as close as you can get in this century – if you see what I mean. The film is set on a council estate, the protagonists are a single parent family, and violence pervades the present, the past and very probably the future. The future looks bleak, the options are not numerous (not least due to the fact that Jumah has been kicked out of several schools until he wound up in this one) and to top it all, Jumah has the rather working class dream of becoming a barber. Not that I’m belittling barbers or people who want to become them. But I’m just making the point that it fits a certain genre particularly well.

So, Brown takes this classic British genre and just… Sets it in Britain today. Which makes perfect sense really. Because London is one of those great metropolises (or metropoli ? I mean, is that the plural?) where you can literally meet people from all over the world. Every kind of person you can possibly imagine comes here to try their luck and you do hear the most incredible stories when you least expect them. Thus, this particular “angry young man” (another staple from the gritty kitchen sink genre) is a Congolese ex-child soldier.   This could very well have been the story of a young man coming out of prison and trying to go “on the straight and narrow” (but of course his ex-gang don’t let him go that easily etc, etc). Instead, it is a rather sad story of violence being violence all over the world and how hard one has to work to truly leave one’s past behind and move on.

I especially loved how truly close to life the situations depicted in the film and the reactions of the characters often were. Jumah is desperately trying to negotiate his way out of a very tricky situation. He is desperately trying to make friends but deep down, he knows that everything he has been through has made him a lot more mature than them. He really wants a “normal” relationship with his girlfriend but teenage angst aside, he finds it harder than most to show his true feelings. Therefore, he doesn’t always make sense, he is frustrating, not only to his mother but to us the viewers as well, but more importantly perhaps, I don’t think you could have made him any more realistic if you tried.

This one is by no means “easy viewing” but it is definitely worth it. If nothing else, it is a very realistic portrait of a slice of life in 21^st century London. And that in itself is definitely worth something.