![]() But through the Trojan horse came black and brown storytellers, filmmakers and actors, who were able to tell stories about our own community.” It’s rare to hear screenwriters and directors speak so openly about the fluidity of their creative roles. “Her name and her reputation can release the kind of funds that mine can’t,” she says of Gavron. “I call Sarah Gavron a Trojan horse,” says Theresa Ikoko, the playwright and first-time screenwriter who came up with Rocks’ story during the workshopping process. I wanted to say thank you to all of them and tell them that they are worthy – Theresa Ikoko We wanted to build a story with a group of women, where we were like big sisters to them, and we wanted to build a film with them.” “We didn’t want to make a film where we impose an idea on these kids. “Rather than it being a film that I directed and led, I was more a kind of facilitator,” Gavron explains. Not so for Gavron’s team, who, with help from the BFI, Film4 and the Wellcome Trust, were able to hold together funding - and crucially, faith - in the movie as it was developed. And even after schoolgirl Bukky Bakray was in place as the central character, with Kosar Ali as her best friend Sumaya, nearly 11 months had gone by without a firm narrative in place.Īs many women in the film industry can attest, a boy’s coming of age story is often seen as a default-setting for universal relatability, while a girl’s - particularly a Black girl’s - is deemed niche. In financing terms, the film was hardly a guaranteed greenlight: here was a film with loose plot strands, featuring a cast of unknown and mostly non-professional teenage actors, talking in accents and about topics that were culturally and locally specific. It was an unconventional, organic production. After her mother abruptly disappears, Rocks tries to keep things together while looking after little brother Emmanuel (D’angelou Osei Kissiedu), whom she protects with a heart-wrenching determination. Revelling in the anecdotal details of a London schoolgirl’s daily life, in loose, quasi-documentary style, the film tells the story of Shola, aka ‘Rocks’ (Bukky Bakray), and her friend Sumaya (Kosar Ali). She wanted to tell a story about the girls she used to see around London as she grew up - young women not seen on screen nearly enough. “Everybody has a voice, and people were able to contribute because they were connected to the world and to the story,” Gavron tells Empire. Rocks was less conventional from the start, and wholly collaborative from the ground up. Her last film, 2015’s Suffragette, featured a star-studded cast and reasonably-sized budget. It is also a markedly different project for the director, Sarah Gavron. An authentic British story of, mostly, black and brown girls, its cast is populated by teenagers who hadn’t acted before, with a 75 per cent female crew. Rocks is a coming-of-age film that makes us rethink what that term means - and its production was just as refreshing. ![]()
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