Tough and tender thriller comes to Nottingham

Bypass, which plays Nottingham's Broadway Cinema at 6pm on Monday 13th April.

George MacKay (pictured) - the star of ‘Pride’ and ‘Sunshine in Leith’ - plays Tim, a young, sickly man who has been left to cope with family debts after his parents’ deaths.

Forced to fend off bailiffs, pressures to join the local drug trade and, most worryingly, increasing ill health. His only solace comes from his ever-loving girlfriend, but this may be about to change when Tim learns he is going to be a father.

The film was inspired by director Duane Hopkins’ return to a housing estate he had grown up in and left in 1992, where he met three teenagers living in a 60s built flat.

Hopkins said: “They did not remember any places of employment. They did not remember family security and stability. They were born into something already crumbling.

“They explained they were going to wait until 3am, then do two burglaries. They knew which houses. But it was what they told me next that shocked me: they knew the people they were to burgle. They were friends.

“One of the three kids was conflicted. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He was frightened. His world was about to change. He was at a crossroads. I wonder if his life took a completely different turn that evening. If he was caught. If he got away. If he enjoyed it. If it taught him that he could never do that again.

“I went and made my film. But afterwards I found I kept coming back to the memory of the conflicted kid. I went to the area again but they were no longer at the flat.

“I started to see that night, and those boys, in the context of something wider both in reality and in terms of a story that could articulate the moral dilemma for that kid. I decided to make a film about what that was. About this country we are creating.”

The film has garnered a string of rave reviews, with the Hollywood Reporter saying ‘the film has an intensity that commands admiration. It portrays a harsh contemporary reality with a rawness that confirms Hopkins as a distinctive filmmaking voice.’

The Guardian called it a ‘potent story about britain’s invisible youth’, while Dazed and Confused magazine described it as ‘spellbinding’.

Bypass producer Samm Haillay, who founded independent production company Third with Hopkins in 2001, and Lara Peake (who plays Tim’s sister opposite George MacKay) will attend a post-screening Q&A at the Broadway on Monday 13th April.