Le gamin au vélo (The Kid with a Bike) + Introduction at ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts

Le gamin au vélo (The Kid with a Bike) sees 11-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), on the run from a children's home where his father has dumped him, travel to his father's place, finding neither him nor his beloved bike. Instead, when his carers catch up with him, he dives into a doctor's waiting room and clings to hairdresser Samantha. She takes an interest and eventually offers to foster him at weekends. You might think that an obvious thawing and building of a bond between the two would follow, but nothing so simple takes place. Instead it is the very fragility of tentative connections that is constantly tested as this angry young boy, played by Doret with astonishing intensity, fights for a sense of self-determination.