Welcome to... THE NEW SISTERHOOD

A CONTEMPORARY TALE OF GIRLHOOD IS EXPLORED IN DAZZLING NEW BRITISH FILM ROCKS

‘We never even said action,’ director Sarah Gavron says on shooting her cast of school kids in the most talked-about film of the month, Rocks (out 24 April). ‘We kept rolling two cameras endlessly and ended up with 15O hours of footage to work through.’ Scouted from her Hackney secondary school, lead Bukky Bakray plays a girl in Year 11 (Rocks) tasked with looking after her lovable little brother Emmanuel (D’Angelou Osei Kissiedu) after their troubled mother abandons them. On the run from social workers, Rocks tries to prevent her brother from being taken into foster care, living off money she makes from working as a make-up artist after school.

Filmed on estates in east London, with every actor making their screen debut, Rocks is a tender exploration of the resilient spirit of girlhood and the transformative power of female friendships, with all the rawness of Larry Clarke’s Kids. ‘It was the noisiest set we ever worked on,’ says Gavron. The crew was deliberately made up of 75% women, as the team wanted the cast to look behind the scenes and believe that one day they could become the camera operator, the writer or the director. ‘Everything was a conversation. We included the girls wherever possible,’ says Gavron. Even the score is an amalgamation of the girls’ playlists, including dancehall, afrobeats and plenty of Rihanna.

Taking the lead BUKKY BAKRAY (LEFT) PLAYS THE FILM’S PROTAGONIST SHOLA – KNOWN AS ‘ROCKS’ TO HER FRIENDS

Uncovering talent THE FILM SEES THE ENTIRE CAST MAKE THEIR ON-SCREEN ACTING DEBUT