43° TFF - Urchin di Harris Dickinson

Review by Clara Bruno – 29 November 2025

Reading time: 2 minutes

Film seen at the 43rd TFF – Cinema Massimo Uno on 28 November 2025

running time: 1h 40’

produced in the UK/USA

written and directed by young London actor Harris Dickinson, here making his debut as both director and screenwriter

presented at the 78th Cannes Film Festival and at the 43rd TFF, Out of Competition.

This is the story of a young homeless drug addict.

Urchin in English refers to sea urchin, but it’s also a somewhat old-fashioned slang term used to describe a street kid, a ragged child, a young drifter.

The author of this story is Harris Dickinson, the excellent British actor we saw in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (2022) in the role of Carl, the handsome model who ends up making humiliating compromises in the Swedish director’s satirical comedy.

With Urchin, Dickinson signs his first film from behind the camera: a strong, original work, with surreal–hallucinatory touches and an excellent performance by Frank Dillane in the lead role. For Harris Dickinson, this debut as writer–director is truly remarkable.

The film is intelligent and compassionate, humorous and quietly critical of a fundamentally respectable, sanitised society.

Mike is a young man who has spent years, since adolescence, living on the streets of London: begging, stealing, eating at charity food distributions. He is jittery, aggressive, unbalanced, unreliable, brimming with resentment and boldness, permanently tense and painfully vulnerable: the result of a lifetime of abandonment results in a constant escape into drugs.

Another young addict, Nathan (played in a cameo by Dickinson), steals Mike’s money. In response, Mike commits an appalling act of theft and violence against an unfortunate benefactor, for which he shows not the slightest remorse. He ends up in prison, gets sober while serving his sentence and, once released, receives a chance at rehabilitation from the British government: finally, a bed and a roof over his head!, a place in a hostel, a job in a hotel kitchen. He tries to get his life back on track, armed with self-help manuals, but his relationship with reality remains illusory.

The social worker arranges a restorative justice session with the victim, a meeting meant to be therapeutic and cathartic, but which Mike has absolutely no idea how to handle: he cannot grasp, even remotely, the new register of emotional intelligence expected of him. Yet at least he realises he has failed the test, and failed at being a decent person. His job in the hotel kitchen falls apart, and his new post as a refuse collector is precarious.

He meets a lovely, sexy and affectionate colleague (actress Megan Northam is very good as Andrea, the girlfriend), but he manages to ruin this potentially supportive relationship as well. A “friend” offers him ketamine, and from there things inevitably go downhill. The addiction returns.

The film, free of moralising, is beautifully made and offers no easy answers.

A truly well-crafted film that I wholeheartedly recommend.

a scene from Urchin

the restorative justice session for the troubled youth with the social workers

Frank Dillane, outstanding in the lead role

the director and screenwriter Harris Dickinson, who's already a celebrated actor