Urchin

Harris Dickinson was still best known as an actor — Beach Rats, Triangle of Sadness, Babygirl — when his first feature premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2025 and Frank Dillane took the section's Best Performance prize. Dickinson wrote it as well, and shot it in London on 16mm with cinematographer Josée Deshaies, better known for her work with Bertrand Bonello.

Dillane plays Mike, homeless in London, moving between hostels, day jobs, old debts and the sort of opportunities that require him to be someone slightly different each time. Dickinson resists both the misery-drama and the redemption-arc versions of this story: the film is interested in the loop rather than the exit, and in how much energy it takes to be charming when you have nowhere to sleep.

Reviews were unusually strong for a debut — 96% on Rotten Tomatoes across 105 reviews — with most of the attention going to Dillane, who is on screen for nearly every minute. It belongs alongside Wasteman and Rye Lane in the recent London cinema the catalogue has been building, and it is the harshest of the three.