Young Scot Gemma lives in the former steel town Motherwell, that lost its base of existence through the radical market-oriented politics of Margret Thatcher. You can “either get knocked up or locked up” here, there are no jobs, the kids drink and commit petty crimes and Gemma’s grandfather whom she grows up with teaches her boxing and keeps pigeons.
Filmed with the discreet closeness of an off-the-cuff camera this hybrid documentation shows a perceptive portrait of a youth on the margins of society – in Scotland that the British once let bleed dry and that didn’t vote for Brexit. Gemma isn’t unhappy: She hangs around with her friends loves her jailbird boyfriend and tries to give her little son all the comfort that she herself never got from her mom. But hopelessness and violence don’t stop even at her resolute confidence. The German premiere of a prize-winning film.