It’s 1983 and school is out. Over the course of the summer holiday, twelve-year-old Shaun befriends a group of local skinheads, finding exactly what he craves in their mayhem and brotherhood. The older Combo leads the gang down a hate spewing path that culminates in an irreversible act of violence.

A clear-eyed and vehemently unsentimental vision of 1980s Britain, Shane Meadows’s coming-of-age drama is a vivid reckoning with the scourge of nationalism. Featuring an outstanding ensemble cast, This is England elucidates the need to belong that underpins the pleasures and perils of tribalism.