The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard, 2013)

This is supposedly based on the short story by Oscar Wilde, but this is really a case of the director leading the audience a merry dance in a search for any possible parallels as the gap between fairy tale and gritty social realism is the smallest hurdle to tackle. So the allusion is best ignored.
This is bleak northern Shane Meadows country, but a sunless version where even the bitter humour has been leached out. Two young lads, one of whom has some form of ADHD, get themselves expelled from school and turn full-time to thieving scrap metal for an exploitative dealer while trying to stay out of the way of their fractured families. The kitchen sink imprint on the film goes all the way through like a stick of rock, except here an actual kitchen sink would not survive a minute before being melted down for a fiver.
It is vital that the pair of leads are naturalistic, and they are, as is the dead-end setting, but it's not quite enough to elevate the whole above worthiness: they are doomed from the start and watching the inevitable unfold is no education.

6/10