Ish: Imran Perretta’s remarkably beautiful film captures the brutal challenges of adolescence

You wonder whether Imran Perretta was thinking of Kes (1969) when he gave a three-letter name to his own film about a painful childhood. Ish might, to a degree, be categorised as British realism in the classic Loachian tradition – not least in its casting of young nonprofessionals. But in his first feature, director Perretta – co-writing here with playwright Enda Walsh – finds his own distinct approach to the contemporary multiracial British everyday. You could call Ish a coming-of-age story. But if that tag tends to suggest a completed process, this film depicts the start of a gradual change: coming of age as a fall from the grace of childhood, and an induction into the potentially brutal challenges of adolescence.

The film’s opening section presents an image of boyhood as earthly paradise. Two boys, Ish and Maram, explore a wood near their Luton home, pick blackberries, build a play camp, revel in the nature that surrounds them: with the treetops swaying in Ish’s POV, it is a fragile utopia of dappled ruralism and of immediate connection, with the world and with each other. Perretta has cast two 12-year-olds, long-standing friends in reality; hence the brisk, seemingly telepathic energy to their interplay: Farhan Hasnat as the diminutive, wide-eyed Ish, Yahya Kitana as Palestinian-British Maram. 

The latter looks and acts older and tougher, speaking modern British patois with the sort of inflections and accent – an Asian-Caribbean-Cockney hybrid – that can’t easily be faked by actors. Maram wants to be a peer of the older boys in the neighbourhood, who for Ish are just that – older, a different species. Maram has learned to walk tough, quoting his father: “If you don’t decide who you are, other people gonna decide for you.”

That proves too true. Throughout the film, we see POV shots through a windscreen, and surveillance footage using facial recognition software: a police van is patrolling locally, on a stop-and-search mission. Falling victim to the patrol’s profiling, Maram is summarily apprehended, while Ish runs: an instant, instinctive self-protection response, understandable in a young boy, but one which initiates a rift between him and Maram. Rejected by his best friend, alternately bullied and reassured by the older crowd, Ish experiences bitter isolation, adding to his grief at the recent loss of his mother. He tries to win back the others’ friendship by joining in as they shoplift fireworks, which they set off in the woods – one last brief reckless idyll.

Early on, Maram tells Ish, “This war is coming… Y’hear that? No backin’ down” – presumably another lesson from his father. The film suggests that for a new British generation, for young Muslims especially, a sense of conflict (internal or global) as an ever-present reality may be what defines their attainment of adulthood. Throughout the film, we hear radio news about profiling and suspicion of Muslims, and about the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. When Maram’s angry father comes to Ish’s house, blaming the boy for his son’s problems, it is as if he has brought the condition of war with him; when the camera watches through a window as Maram and Ish fight, it is to further tension-inducing news reports.

In contrast to the mood of conflict, Ish offers a tender portrait of the Muslim family as refuge. Ish’s older sister (a warm, confident debut by singer Joy Crookes) mixes teasing and tough love; his no-nonsense grandmother takes him in hand to help him redeem himself; and his dad Naeem, an airport worker whose weary gait shows that he carries the world on his shoulders, nevertheless unfailingly supports his boy. Here is a father who is calm, thoughtful and nurturing, who hasn’t let other people, Maram’s combative parent included, decide who he is.

Along with its emotional acuteness, this is a remarkably beautiful film. The black-and-white photography by Jermaine Canute Edwards (director of photography on Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow) superbly handles chiaroscuro, both expressionistic (fireworks in the woods at night) and domestic (daylight through a kitchen window). Perretta himself also contributes a distinctive score, from lugubrious, spare strings to a haunting choral chant. 

But what ultimately energises Ish most is a superbly directed cast: the strutting older lads, Kitana’s nervily characterful Maram, and Hasnat’s wide-eyed, pensive Ish, whose aliveness to the world around him, its joys and dangers, make for a vividly memorable evocation of childhood’s end. You can’t help wanting to follow Ish – like the young protagonists of The 400 Blows (1959) or Pather Panchali (1955) – further through life. 

► Ish is in UK cinemas 31 July.