After being excluded from school, 13-year-old Arbor and his best mate Swifty begin collecting scrap metal for Kitten, a local Bradford dealer, using a horse and cart. But when Arbor begins to emulate the shady Kitten by becoming increasingly greedy and exploitative, tensions start to build.

Though self-consciously structured as if a fairy tale or fable, Clio Barnard’s follow-up to the docudrama The Arbor continues the tradition of Britain’s kitchen sink socio-realism. Both devastating and compassionate, The Selfish Giant is a profound film on friendship and the class system.