The Arbor

Clio Barnard's first film is about the Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar and the daughters she left behind. Dunbar was born in 1961, grew up on the Buttershaw estate, wrote her first play at fifteen and died in 1990. The method is unusual. Barnard spent two years recording audio interviews with Dunbar's family, friends and neighbours, edited those recordings into something like a screenplay, and had actors lip-sync to the voices on screen. Every sentence you hear comes from the real person; every face you see belongs to an actor. That strangeness deliberately exposes the relationship documentary has with testimony. Added to this are outdoor performances of Dunbar's autobiographical play The Arbor staged among the houses of the estate, and archive footage. The centre of gravity is the life of her daughter Lorraine, and the film refuses to reduce her to an easy story of victimhood. Who it is for: viewers interested in formally new documentary and in British working-class stories. Who it is not for: anyone who would rather not approach addiction, neglect and the death of a child.