Animol - Review
LFF Special
Walters and Love collaborate to make a prison film that sets itself aside from the rest, challenging genre expectations to tell a personal tale of friendship, fractured family ties and criminal exploitation.
Directed by Ashley Walters, Running Time 93 mins, Distributed by StudioCanal
Review by Mitch Bailey
The prison genre within UK cinema is a bloated one, as acknowledged by actor turned director Ashley Walters at the Animol premiere at London Film Festival. But there’s something about Walters’ directorial debut that finds a new angle and shows a level of vulnerability and sensitivity rarely seen in similar works.
Written by veteran of British ‘geezer’ cinema Nick Love (Football Factory, Marching Powder), Animol finds Troy (Tut Nyuot), a teen accused of being complicit in a violent murder, navigating the manipulative, corrosive young offenders system. We first encounter Troy sat in a processing centre, deep in thought. Immediately the film establishes it’s main players - sat with him awaiting their new imprisoned lives are Krystian, a petty thief with a soft underbelly, and Dion, an individual already building his criminal network on the inside and intimidating his peers. Walters and Love very early on establish the young offenders institution as a lonely, scary place, somewhere that survival instincts are key and vigilance is a must. Walters’ own experiences within the prison setup give Animol a different storytelling perspective; whilst there’s still a focus on the violent, unpredictable nature of incarceration, there’s a deliberate effort to show the emotional side of prison life and the toll this can take on a young person. Nick Love also incorporates his own upbringing to the film, highlighting breakdowns in maternal relationships. The fractured bond between Troy and his mother Joy (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) makes for one of the strongest narrative strands in the film, showing the way in which Troy is effected emotionally inside and out of prison, and how he carries this burden with him day to day.
Newcomers Vladyslav Baliuk (Krystian) and Sekou Diaby (Dion) are both real stars in their own right - Dion is a truly intimidating character, his actions inflicting a claustrophobic sense of dread upon Troy, pulling him in as an ally before throwing him to the wolves - it’s a truly abusive, manipulative relationship, one that Diaby nails. Krystian is essentially the moral good of the film; his relationship with Troy is the most heartfelt aspect of the story, a bond which is tested to great lengths as the narrative progresses. It’s this relationship that truly sets apart Animol from the pack - the pair will make you laugh, cry, feel shame towards the system they find themselves in and bring you hope for the possibility of a greater future. Meanwhile, Stephen Graham, who previously collaborated with Walters on the acclaimed series Adolescence, stars in a small but crucial role, playing the educational coordinator and supportive mentor ‘Claypole’. Graham only appears for roughly 10 minutes of the running time but every scene he touches turns to gold, unsurprising at this point considering the impact the actor has had on his recent works. There’s a lovely scene towards the end of the film where Graham talks about ‘shame’ and teaches the inmates to live in the moment and be “free”. It’s a poignant moment and encompasses why Animol is a truly unique film.
