British director Ken Loach, winner of Human Rights Watch's 2002 Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award, has been a major voice of social realism in narrative cinema for nearly four decades, combining political commitment with sensitive observation of everyday life to create gritty, moving working-class portraits. Like Loach's Kes and My Name Is Joe, Sweet Sixteen is a lucid study of the conflict between individual desires and material circumstances. Fifteen-year-old Liam (beautifully played by newcomer Martin Compston) only wants to make enough money to buy a riverfront caravan to live in with his mum, who's due to be sprung from prison in time for Liam's sixteenth birthday. But in the devastated economy of Greenock, Scotland, the best career option for a resourceful young man is a grim one: pushing heroin. Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty-winner of the Best Screenplay award at Cannes-deliver a potent message without preaching, fully immersing us in their characters' world of turbulent emotions and thwarted dreams.