Rocks

It’s the first day back off sum­mer break and Rocks (Bukky Bakray) comes home from school to a note from her mum say­ing she needs to clear her head, and to look after her younger broth­er. Rocks sus­pect­ed this, query­ing the spe­cial break­fast her mum made that morn­ing – yam and eggs – and ask­ing whether she was alright.

We learn Funke (Layo-Christi­na Akin­lude) has aban­doned her chil­dren before, and strug­gles to man­age her med­ica­tion. Direc­tor Sarah Gavron and writ­ers There­sa Ikoko and Claire Wil­son tell Rocks’ sto­ry from the moment she is stripped of parental care and thrust into the role of care-giv­er, but it’s the unbreak­able bonds of teenage friend­ship that sit at the heart of the story.

Although prin­ci­pal­ly a social-real­ist dra­ma set in and around in East Lon­don, Rocks is for­tu­nate­ly bereft of the mis­er­ab­lism asso­ci­at­ed with the genre. As Rocks and her sev­en-year-old broth­er Emmanuelle (D’angelou Osei Kissiedu) bounce from place to place and avoid social ser­vices, their des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion is punc­tu­at­ed with more care­free and enter­tain­ing scenes at school. They sell indi­vid­ual sweets from a mul­ti­pack, place bets on who’s buy­ing six wings and chips, teach one anoth­er how to use a tam­pon, and con­duct mas­sive food fights in home eco­nom­ics class.

With a cast of first timers ground­ing the dra­ma, Rocks is both a love let­ter to com­mu­ni­ty and a nod to Black women who sel­dom get to be girls. The cen­tral group of Rocks , Sumaya (Kosar Ali), Khadi­ja (Tawhe­da Begum), Yawa (Afi Okaid­ja), Sabi­na (Anas­ta­sia Dymitrow) and Agnes (Ruby Stokes) speak to one anoth­er with the free­ness and short­hand that comes nat­u­ral­ly from attend­ing an all girl’s school, unre­strict­ed by self-doubt or male attention.

Their only focus is look­ing out for one anoth­er, and it’s delighf­tul to behold Bakray’s per­for­mance – she car­ries the film on her nar­row shoul­ders. While the character’s cir­cum­stances should deny the whim­sy of a more typ­i­cal com­ing-of-age film, she still allows Rocks’ soft edges to be seen – she dis­plays the full spec­trum of Black girl­hood beyond resilience. Kosar Ali gives a des­per­ate­ly ten­der por­tray­al of loy­al­ty as Sumaya, her fun­ny one-lin­ers only rivalled by mouthy scamp Emmanuelle.

It would be remiss to over­look the poten­tial pow­er dynam­ics between a white direc­tor and her pre­dom­i­nant­ly Black cast. Close-up cam­era work by Hélèné Lou­vart dur­ing a dance scene where Rocks leads the class to ​‘Shaku Shaku’, verges on the voyeuristic.

And yet Gavron has used her clout to pull togeth­er an inclu­sive team that goes beyond rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al box tick­ing. She has made a film pow­ered by real empa­thy and joy. Bakray isn’t a black face in a white sto­ry – there is space for cul­tur­al nuance. Sub­tleties in the writ­ing high­light deep­er seat­ed cul­tur­al issues; such as the kinds of sup­port offered to Rocks by Black teach­ers ver­sus white ones, and the mis­guid­ed trust con­cerned white peo­ple place in gov­ern­ment bod­ies, not acknowl­edg­ing the hos­til­i­ty they often have towards eth­nic communities.

Gavron and her team make space for girls like Rocks, instead of hem­ming them into a stereo­type. The film ends as it began: with a black screen and the laugh­ter of teenage girls.