Since her breakthrough film Red Road in 2006, Andrea Arnold hasn’t minded making us wait for her next projects. Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights, and 2016’s American Honey all had a substantial gap in-between. But the longest wait is about to end with the release of Bird, which had its award-winning World Premiere at Cannes earlier this year.
Starring Barry Keoghan, Passages actor Franz Rogowski, and newcomer Nykiya Adams, Bird centers on a 12-year-old girl whose chaotic home life with her Dad and brother gets shaken up with the arrival of a mysterious stranger.
Arnold is known for drawing star-making performances from unknown actresses, just as she did with Katie Jarvis and Sasha Lane. By all of the early reports, Adams delivers in the same way.
SYNOPSIS: The long-awaited return to fiction filmmaking from Academy Award-winner Andrea Arnold (American Honey, Fish Tank), BIRD is a tender, striking and extraordinarily surprising coming-of-age fable about marginalised life in the fringes of contemporary society. 12-year-old Bailey (astounding newcomer Nykiya Adams) lives with her devoted but chaotic single dad Bug (Barry Keoghan, Saltburn) and wayward brother Hunter in a squat in Gravesend, north Kent. Approaching puberty and seeking attention and adventure, Bailey’s fractured home life is transformed when she encounters Bird (Franz Rogowski, Passages), a mysterious stranger on a journey of his own. A wondrous portrait of the transition from childhood to adolescence that remains grounded in her typically empathetic social realism, Arnold’s latest strides to the wildly poetic rhythm of her own drum.
Bird opens in theaters on November 8th.
