Hector

Hector has lived beside the motorway for years. He once had a home, a family and an ordinary life; now he sleeps at service stations, washes there and eats there. Every December he travels from Scotland down to London, to a temporary Christmas shelter. On this year's journey he decides to face his past. This is Jake Gavin's first feature, with Peter Mullan in the lead. The telling neither pities homelessness nor prettifies it; the people who help Hector and the people who are uneasy around him are equally real. It works in the shape of a road film, but what lies at the end is not a place, it is a family. The tone is calm and the film never raises its voice.