Scrapper

A Film by Charlotte Regan

This vibrant and inventive father-daughter comedy follows Georgie (Lola Campbell), a resourceful 12-year-old girl who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working class suburb of London following the death of her mother. She makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali (Alin Uzun) and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle.

Out of nowhere, her estranged father Jason (Harris Dickinson; Triangle of Sadness, Beach Rats) arrives and forces her to confront reality. Uninterested in this sudden new parental figure, Georgie is stubbornly resistant to his efforts. As they adjust to their new circumstances, Georgie and Jason find that they both still have a lot of growing up to do. Winner of a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Scrapper is full of spirit, humor, and formal inventiveness that sets it apart from much of British working-class cinema.

Dickinson and remarkable newcomer Campbell imbue irresistible charm into this moving and frequently hilarious story of two emotionally tangled people: a grieving kid thrust into adulthood and a father in over his head.

Critics Reviews:

• “Delicately dancing the knife edge between too-cute and over-maudlin, the filmmaker and her terrific actors have given viewers that rarity in cinema: uplift without the dreary moralizing.” – Ann Hornaday (Washington Post)

• “It’s a highly implausible scenario but, using a touch of absurdism, British writer-director Charlotte Regan pulls it off. With this sunlit film, she’s not making the usual gritty example of working-class naturalism we expect from the British.” – Sandra Hall (Sydney Morning Herald)

• “Lively, fluid camerawork by Molly Manning Walker – who recently won Un Certain Regard at Cannes with her directorial debut, How to Have Sex – chimes with the lovely two-step between Campbell and Dickenson. As plucky as the title suggests.” – Tara Brady (Irish Times)