LIFE’S SMALL DECISIONS TOLD ON AN EPIC SCALE
works on quite an operatic scale.”
For actor Sam Adewunmi, who plays a teenage Femi and who is himself the child of a Nigerian immigrant mother, the story was all too relatable.
“I just felt I knew who Femi was and I understood his journey and challenges.
“I knew many people who had also experienced part of his story. I grew up in London myself so the journey that he goes through, of finding himself and working out who he is in all the different spaces that he goes in, were so true and so honest to what it’s like being a young man in London.
“It’s a British Nigerian story, which I don’t think gets as much light or recognition, and it’s also a story about adoption, that we don’t really hear about, a young kid being displaced and trying to find himself in new spaces.”
Femi’s journey, from a white rural community to a council flat in a diverse area of south London, challenges his identity and a string of bad choices take him far from his childhood in Lincolnshire.
He is recruited by a local hustler and starts smoking weed. Eventually a teacher confronts him about the disastrous path he is on.
“There is a fragility to the coming of age process,” the director says.
“He’s seen the various paths he can take and there are people who represent a certain lifestyle in each path, and it’s a film that is from a single perspective so you really feel the weight of every decision that he makes.
“We talk about these kids that can get into situations – it’s really that easy, it’s