How I Live Now

Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from New York to her cousins' farm in England. At first she is closed off, prickly and foreign, and then something starts between her and her cousin Edmond. Just at that point a war breaks out. The family is broken up, the children are sent to separate camps, and Daisy's only aim becomes getting back to the farm with her small cousin Piper. Kevin Macdonald directed. Saoirse Ronan plays Daisy, George MacKay plays Edmond, Tom Holland plays Isaac and Harley Bird plays Piper. The source is Meg Rosoff's 2004 young-adult novel, which won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2004 and the Michael L. Printz Award in 2005. The same novel had also been adapted for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Drama in 2007. The story is built on how war breaks families apart and on a young person forced to put survival ahead of everything. In the end Daisy chooses to stay in England rather than return to America. Who it is for: viewers who like young-adult adaptations that show the daily texture of war rather than a dystopia, and anyone who likes Ronan. Who it is not for: anyone wanting the cause and the politics of the war. The film never explains the conflict and shows only its consequences.