Animol ★★★

The title of Ashley Walters‘ harrowing first feature, premiering earlier this year at Berlinale‘s Perspective section and recently screening at Karlovy Vary, is a misspelled scribble on one of the prison cell walls confining the young protagonist. Within the brutal setting that is technically a youth detention center but hardly any less vicious and unforgiving than the adult penitentiaries to which many of its inhabitants will graduate, it becomes an indicator of the inmates’ gradual dehumanization and last remnants of childlike innocence. Troy (Tut Nyuot) is here on remand for conspiracy to commit murder and forced to choose between being pushed further into criminal activities or being torn apart by the other inmates. 

Each of them poses a different kind of danger to the taciturn teenager. The coldly calculating Dion (Sekou Diaby), who offers him community in return for support in his drug business, has the manipulative charisma to draw Troy into crime for good. Sociopathic Mason (Ryan Dean) can snap at anyone any minute, either to prove he is not to be messed with or because he is, in fact, a deranged killer. Even Polish burglar Krystian (Vladyslav Baliuk), whose crime is more hilarious than intimidating, gives Troy a valuable break for no other reason than sensing a kindred soul, but his friendship could make Troy look weak in the eyes of the others. 

These unforgiving hierarchies are conveyed within moments after the solemn protagonist enters this grim place. The tightly spun plot wastes no time in dwelling on the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the British prison system. With the sole exception of Stephen Graham’s welfare officer Claypole, whose unshakable composure can even calm down Mason, there are hardly any officials or guards to be seen. Where they are present, they act like mindless extensions of a detention machinery draining everyone within its grip of empathy. This makes the all-male microcosm behind bars feel all the more like a world governed by its own laws, the first one being to show no compassion. 

Every corridor and communal area becomes another arena where the inmates must establish their own status with violence. The institution itself is the true antagonist; a suffocating ecosystem systematically rewarding cruelty while punishing vulnerability. His repressed anger at his mother Joy (Sharon Duncan-Brewster, making a part of just a few minutes memorable), a recovered drug addict, and constant tension make Troy an easy target for provocation. As his situation wavers between treacherous stability and danger, the plot undermines the genre’s fixation on masculinity by enriching Troy’s character with a secretly blossoming queer romance. This insecure love springs both from a shared longing for affection and secret opposition to the emotionally deadening structures around them. 

But every little expression of tenderness is dangerous in this environment, as Troy instantly finds out. Walters explores the counterproductive consequences of institutionalization on young men overexposed to a toxic ideal of violent masculinity. Tut Nyuot’s distilled breakout performance seethes with barely controlled anger. The reduced color palette of Tasha Back’s cinematography reflects the limited options left to those who end up in the bleak setting. Experimental scenes like the lightless prologue, only revealing the audio track of Troy’s possible murderous altercation, highlight Walters’ strong sense of atmosphere and composition. The only blunder in this gripping psychological drama is the saintly and unrealistic Claypole, the kind of good official that only exists in films.

Still, its harsh authenticity and nuanced look at delinquent disorientation, as well as the devastating effects of social disconnection, mark Walters as a filmmaker with an astute sense of social structures and the multiple prisons they create.