Ratcatcher

A poetic coming-of-age drama about a young working-class boy in 70s-era Glasgow grappling with a dark secret.

Glasgow, 1973: a crippling garbage strike envelops a working-class neighbourhood littered with overflowing rubbish and a growing rat plague. Two young boys, James and his friend Ryan play by a dirty canal. When their rough horseplay gets out of hand, Ryan drowns and James is left with a devastating secret to carry. We witness James’ fragile childhood, a series of small joys in a harsh environment. Family life, blossoming first love, local bullies, and an opportunity for his family to move to a better place are all filtered through James’s ongoing burden of profound guilt.

Curator’s note
Lynne Ramsay’s evocative and heartbreaking debut feature continued the promise she showed with a trio of phenomenal award-winning short films (Small Deaths, Gasman, Kill the Day). Like those films, Ramsay continues her exploration of childhood and working-class life in Scotland, which in itself draws from a rich tradition of films such as Ken Loach’s Kes and Bill Douglas's triptych of films, My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home. What is apparent from the first enigmatic frame of a young boy wrapped up in a curtain (a cocoon or funeral shroud?), is that a filmmaker with a singular vision has arrived.