Synopsis
Directors: Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin
90 min, UK-Sweden, 2019
Meet Gemma. Captivating, pretty, and strong, she’s a tough teenager from Scotland’s projects. Will she escape her rundown town or find salvation in other ways—“get ‘knocked up’ or ‘locked up,’” as she quips. Beautifully photographed and piercingly intimate, this stunning fly-on-the-wall documentary feels like a fiction film by the likes of Andrea Arnold or Lynne Ramsay with its “alternately lyrical and gut-punching” tale of working-class life (Variety). Winner of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Best Documentary Prize, Scheme Birds follows Gemma over the course of four turbulent years, through both joy and violence. “A remarkable achievement,” “wrenchingly affecting” (Screen International) and hailed by The New York Times as “a heartening portrait of resilience,” Scheme Birds is a compassionate and heartbreaking slice-of-life about a 16-year-old girl coming into her own as a young woman.