Animol: Ashley Walters proves an instinctive actor’s director with a tense cell block drama

As Troy (Tut Nyuot) approaches the youth detention centre where he will be held, the camera closes in on his apprehensive face, bathed in the shimmering blues and ochre yellows of Tasha Back’s cinematography. The tenderness is deceptive – before Troy has reached the wing, fellow inmate Dion (Sekou Diaby) orders him to smuggle in a phone, promising misery if he refuses. The days thereafter tick past agonisingly slowly, with lifetimes of trauma poured into single afternoons. Stretches of numbing inactivity are punctured by sudden terror. The equally vulnerable Krystian (Vladyslav Baliuk) becomes Troy’s ally and others identify them as “no trouble”, which here amounts to marking them as prey. There is no keeping your head down and serving your sentence in this world, because playing by the rules brings no corresponding safety. Protection instead comes through Dion, an unnervingly tranquil presence who has turned captivity into a kingdom, his cell stocked with weed, video games and obedient henchmen. Diaby, the gifted charmer Toby in the BBC Three drama Boarders (2024), weaponises his innate charisma in a role that the director, Ashley Walters, might once have played himself.

In spite of the ever-present menace, Walters captures hints of a not-yet-extinguished childish wonder. Coloured cell windows light the wing like Christmas wrapping paper; drugs descending by drone resemble an arcade game; the inmates pass joints with the glee of schoolboys behind the bike sheds. But only when they’re alone together can Troy and Krystian truly forget the brutality that surrounds them: Nyuot and Baliuk physically transform, tension draining from them as the walls momentarily recede.

As an actor, Walters has always moved elegantly between vulnerability and gravitas, sometimes holding both within the same frame; unsurprisingly, he proves an instinctive actor’s director. His camera lingers close on Nyuot’s face, alert to fluctuations in composure, as naked fear gives way to the wary vigilance of someone whose survival is not guaranteed.

When Stephen Graham’s formidable welfare officer questions Troy about attaching himself to the institution’s alphas, the boy asks: “What else do you want me to do?” Animol shows a system that leaves these boys with vanishingly few choices, then punishes them for the choices they make. Walters’ achievement is to convey how brutality can be learned without allowing it to become an identity, keeping sight of the frightened boys beneath the hardened men they are being forced to become.

► Animol is screening at the 2026 BFI London Film Festival on 11, 15 and 18 October. It will be released across UK cinemas on 30 October.