“Concern the Strolling Useless” actor Frank Dillane turns into a star due to Harris Dickinson and his writing/directing debut, “Urchin.” Rising distributor 1-2 Particular’s flagship launch began its journey on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition, the place Dillane received finest actor out of Un Sure Regard for his portrayal of a London tough sleeper circling the drain of his personal self-destruction. After Cannes, Dickinson and Dillane introduced “Urchin” to the Telluride Movie Competition as an Oscar-hopeful bid. “Urchin” opens in theaters October 10 from 1-2 Particular. Watch the trailer beneath.
Starring Dillane as an unhoused, drug-chasing drifter in London, and within the vein of Mike Leigh’s “Bare” by way of poisonous emotional candor, “Urchin” follows Mike (Dillane) as he stumbles by way of habit, and London’s correctional and reformatory methods, making an attempt to construct his life again up once more. Along with the Un Sure Regard performing prize, the devastating “Urchin” additionally received the FIPRESCI prize. (IndieWire’s Anne Thompson even deemed Dillane a possible Oscar contender.)
From IndieWire’s evaluate of Urchin: “Dickinson’s lithe and tetchy script solely feigns at a clear hero’s journey so as to undercut it with the chaos of human habits, and what might need been a pleasant three-act story a few moppet on the mend sours into one thing far much less digestible or instructive… In fact, ‘Urchin’ is all of the extra rewarding for its messy method to Mike’s disarray, which rejects a transparent prognosis in favor of honoring a personality who seems like he can’t even afford to know himself. Dickinson’s movie — formed by individuals he knew rising up, and additional knowledgeable by his work with quite a lot of social outreach charities — displays a mature, and regularly harrowing, recognition of how individuals may be held captive by the centrifugal drive of their very own behavioral patterns.”
The solid additionally consists of Megan Northam and Dickinson himself, who will quickly be shipped off to Beatles land to play John Lennon for Sam Mendes’ upcoming Apple quadrilogy. “The Beast” and “Passages” cinematographer Josée Deshaies is the director of pictures on “Urchin.”
Began this previous February forward of the Berlinale by Sideshow co-founding government Jason Hellerstein, 1-2 Particular has picked up a handful of competition films this yr. The distributor is firmly within the Radu Jude enterprise, with North American rights to the Romanian director’s Silver Bear winner “Kontinental 25” and upcoming Locarno premiere “Dracula.” There’s additionally Christian Petzold’s “Miroirs No. 3,” purchased for the U.S. from Metrograph Footage, which paused theatrical releases this yr, and Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Sure Regard Jury Prize winner “A Poet” developing.
“Urchin” opens in New York and Los Angeles October 10 earlier than a nationwide launch October 17.