Ratcatcher

Name: Ratcatcher
Genre: Social Issues, Drama
Released: 1999
Duration: 94 min
Cast: Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, William Eadie, Michelle Stewart, Lynne Ramsay Jr.

Lynne Ramsay19991h 34mSocial Issues, Drama

Why we chose it

For her first feature, Lynne Ramsay (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”) auditioned a thousand children and picked a boy who had never acted before. What she made is superb social realism about a child’s hope, set during a Glasgow bin strike, with room for a mouse that floats off towards the moon.

Synopsis

In 1973 Glasgow is buried in rubbish: the bin men have been on strike for weeks and the bags are piling up outside the tenements. When two boys start scuffling on the bank of the canal one day, only one of them climbs back out of the water. James goes home to his cramped flat and tells nobody what happened.